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Significant shift in African AIDS response required

7 December 2007 – for immediate release

The resounding consensus emerging at a regional HIV/AIDS conference being hosted in Johannesburg this week is that a significant shift in the response to HIV/AIDS on the continent is required if programmes are to be successful.

The meeting, Civil Society, HIV/AIDS and Africa: capacity, sustainability, partnerships, is co-hosted by the International HIV/AIDS Alliance and the UK Government's Department for International Development, and co-organised by UNAIDS and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria.

Representatives from civil society organisations, government and donors from across the globe are gathering to share and learn of others' experiences in building capacity to combat the pandemic.

This shift in emphasis primarily revolves around the role played by civil society in the response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

“We need a shift in the way civil society relates to universal access and away from a lesser role to being an equal partner in the implementation of national strategies,” Mark Stirling, UNAIDS' director for the regional support team for Eastern and Southern Africa, said at the opening ceremony of the conference.

Stirling said Southern Africa in particular was hamstrung by bottlenecks that currently translated into an average of more than 80% of interventions falling behind targets to achieve universal access by 2010.

There therefore needed to be a properly planned response to significantly ramp up the capacity and participation of civil society organisations to fill this gap.

“We need funding models to move away from the status quo, and need a quantum shift for an effective response,” said Stirling.

Positive news for civil society organisations is that one of the major funders of HIV/AIDS programmes, the Global Fund, wants to encourage more civil society organisations to be principal recipients of their funding.

“We need to move on and make sure that civil society is the principal recipient in more countries,” said Christoph Benn, the Global Fund's executive director of external relations.

He added that the perception that funds for HIV/Aids programmes was drying up was unfounded and that “unprecedented” resources were available. He said that $10-billion had been pledged for the Fund, while PEPFAR was expected to announce the extension of its mandate, to the tune of $30-billion over the next two to five years.

“We believe that the availability of resources is not the most critical issue,” he said. “Capacity building for scaling up responses is the most critical, and we need to scale up dramatically.”

Benn said that although $1,1-billion had been approved by the Fund in Round 7 of funding proposals, 50% of proposals had been approved.

“We need $2-billion to $4-billion in the following rounds, and the question is: do we have the capacity to implement that? I hope we don’t find ourselves in a position where we had the resources, but could not implement them.”

The conference concludes on Friday, at which point delegates hope to be forge a way forward that will result in the ramping up of activities to meet the challenges such as the Millennium Development Goals and universal access to HIV prevention, care and treatment.

ENDS

Simon Moore, International HIV/AIDS Alliance, 01273 718744, smoore@aidsalliance.org

The mission of the International HIV/AIDS Alliance (the Alliance) is to support communities to reduce the spread of HIV and to meet the challenges of AIDS.

Established in 1993, the International HIV/AIDS Alliance (the Alliance) is a global partnership of nationally-based organisations working to support community action on AIDS.

These national partners help local community groups and other non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to take action on AIDS, and are supported by technical expertise, policy work and fundraising carried out across the Alliance. In addition to community and country-based programmes, the Alliance also has extensive regional programmes and works on a range of international activities such as support for South–South cooperation, operations research, training and good practice development, as well policy analysis and advocacy.

The organisations in the International HIV/AIDS Alliance are extremely well placed to begin to address challenges to civil society organisations in making effective use of international funding, with their experience both in providing technical support to community organisations (particularly to marginalised groups), and their knowledge of international AIDS funding mechanisms.

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