'Communities must help end AIDS'

THE Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) urged governments in the Asia-Pacific region to fully empower the grassroots communities to help end acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) as a public health threat.

Likewise, the organization called on communities' leadership roles to be made core in all human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) plans and programs and for community-led organizations to be fully funded.

«Communities help drive demand for services. They ensure that people not reached by formal health systems can get support. They monitor the quality of HIV services and help shape solutions,» Harry Prabowo, program manager of the Asia-Pacific Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (APN+), said.

«Investments in community leadership are essential to the success of prevention, testing, linkage to care, retention and adherence results. This is not just a nice thing to do; it ensures the programs work and makes financial sense,» he added.

Ahead of the World AIDS Day observance, UNAIDS launched a new report which demonstrates the critical role of communities, and how underfunding and harmful barriers are holding back their lifesaving work and obstructing the end of AIDS.

The «Let Communities Lead» report showed that the proportion of HIV funding channeled through community-led organizations has declined by at least 35 percent over the past year.

It said that to accelerate progress, the work of communities on the frontlines must be better integrated into all aspects of the HIV response and properly resourced.

«Too often, communities are treated by decision-makers as problems to be managed, instead of being recognized and supported as leaders. Communities are not in the way; they light the way to the end of AIDS,» Winnie Byanyima, executive director of UNAIDS, said.

Communities include organizations of people living with HIV; the key populations (men who have sex with men, people who use drugs, prisoners and other people in detention, sex workers and transgender people); and other civil society organizations.

Since the inception of the AIDS pandemic, these groups have driven progress, which includes activism for global access to lifesaving antiretroviral