Caribbean Leaders invited to “end to AIDS” UN meeting

Apr 15, 2016 News

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Invitations have been issued to leaders of the Caribbean to participate in a United Nations High Level meeting on HIV/AIDS in June. This is according to information disseminated by the Caricom Secretariat yesterday.

According to Caricom, UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, has issued invitations to all Caribbean Heads of Government to participate in the meeting slated for June 8- 10, 2016 in New York, United States of America.
The UN meeting is one that is held every five years. This year efforts will be made to review the progress made in coping with the disease since the last meeting in 2011. The outcome is expected to be the formulation of a political declaration charting the steps that are required to end the epidemic by 2030.
And according to Caricom, “this is in keeping with the resolution establishing the Sustainable Development Goals at the UN General Assembly in September 2015.”
The meeting comes at a time when Guyana is working towards the elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS. According to Minister of Public Health, Dr. George Norton, “if Cuba can do it, so should Guyana, and with that we have to work.”
Cuba was last year just last year named the first country to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis and, according to Minister Norton, achieving this is no small task, even for an island territory.
“We recognise them for what they have done and there are many things that might have gone in their favour or might be in their favour, but we take away no credit and laud Cuba for being the first country in the world to have achieve that,” said the Minister as he noted that Guyana is poised for a similar achievement.
He however pointed out that unlike Cuba’s island setting, Guyana’s borders are porous.
“We are surrounded by countries that we really have no control over and persons traverse frequently,” said the Minister, as he admitted that eliminating mother-to-child transmission of HIV “would be a difficult thing to do; regardless of that we should try to gain that status like Cuba has done.”
It is moreover expected that the leaders will address the shortcomings in achieving the desired goals.
The new Governments in Jamaica and Haiti, which together account for approximately 71 per cent of People living with HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean, have agreed to send high level representatives to the UN meeting, according to Caricom.
This was revealed during a joint-mission to these countries by Dr. Edward Greene, United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for HIV in the Caribbean; Dr. Cesar Nuñez, UNAIDS Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean and Mr. Dereck Springer, Director of the Pan Caribbean Partnership against HIV and AIDS (PANCAP) Coordinating Unit. The joint mission was conducted during the period April 3-9 last.
The missions included consultations with Haiti’s President Jocelerme Privert, Mr. Pierrot Delienne, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Religious Affairs, and Dr. Daphnee Benoit Delsoin, Minister of Health; and Jamaica’s Senator Kamina Johnson Smith, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Dr. Christopher Tufton, Minister of Health and Hon. Delroy Chuck, Minister of Justice.
It was recognized then that while much progress has been made, much more is required to be done in the next five years to eradicate AIDS. The Regional state of affairs is a reduction in the incidence of HIV by 49 per cent; deaths from AIDS reduced by 52 per cent; and the number of persons living with AIDS on ARVs increased from under 10 per cent to approximately 44 per cent over the past 10 years.
In both Jamaica and Haiti, political leaders and representatives of civil society including faith leaders expressed their support for the UNAIDS strategy for fast tracking the response to AIDS and the reformulated PANCAP Justice for All Roadmap.  Both place emphasis on prevention and treatment as well as eliminating AIDS-related stigma and discrimination.  Hence, at the planned meeting, the Caribbean is expected to strongly advocate for sustainable financing, universal health coverage and the removal of the barriers to access to concessional funding for countries classified as middle/upper income countries.
“Fast tracking these policies is imperative for staving off the reversal of the gains made so far,” Caricom has declared, pointing out that “according to the President of Haiti ‘all sectors must be involved and there is need for sustainable funding and technical support’.”
Caricom has noted too that “in this respect the Caribbean has a credible record of achievement. Several countries in the region are poised to achieve the target for elimination of mother to child transmission of HIV and congenital Syphilis”.
It is, however, still the region with the second highest incidence of the disease, according to Caricom which outlined that “some 250,000 are living with HIV, of which just under half have access to treatment with relatively high rates among vulnerable populations including young women between the ages of 15 and 29 years”.
It was for this reason, it was pointed out that the First Ladies of the Region are championing a programme “Every Caribbean Woman Every Caribbean Child” with a focus on empowering women and girls, reducing violence against them as well as the high levels of teenage pregnancies and cervical cancer.
In fact, these trends prompted Senator Kamina Johnson Smith, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Jamaica to remark that “this is not just a health problem: it is a development problem.”
In preparation for the meeting in June, UNAIDS and PANCAP are coordinating a series of national consultations and CARICOM plans to convene a regional engagement of a cross section of stakeholders designed to achieve a consolidated response.
“The UN HLM provides an opportunity for the Region to make its presence felt in the global arena,” said Dr. Greene.

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