National Health Secretary shares her experiences at the XVIII International AIDS Conference in Vienna, Austria
As a member of the Cordaid to the XVIII International Aids Conference that took place in Vienna, Austria from 19 to 23 July 2010, I would like to share my experience as follows:
The opening, which took place on the evening of 18 July, was very good as it rightly set the agenda of what was to come in the preceding days. The theme Rights Here, Right Now was adequately captured in all the opening speeches which were made by people of various backgrounds and ranks from the UN Secretary General to youth group representatives. My best opening speech was from the youth representative who called upon the society to change its views towards the youth by regarding them as leaders of today not only tomorrow as they have the potential to contribute to the response to HIV and AIDS.The presenter argued that by referring to youth as leaders of tomorrow society is killing their rights to meaningfully participate and help make decisions in the fight against HIV and AIDS.
The conference had two zones of operation one being the main zone which required registration for access while the other was a Global Village Zone where various groups had subzones showcasing their work, sharing best practices, advocating and networking. Cordaid and its partners grabbed this opportunity to come up with a Caregivers Action Networking zone. This was a very good arrangement which was able to bring together people doing similar work in different countries to share best practices and learn from one another; and indeed there was a lot of sharing. The icing on top of this cake was that each morning there was an expert to also share some expert knowledge in the field of care! The one I liked most was the visit by Steven Lewis who is the former UN African Envoy on HIV and AIDS, and also Board Chair of the Steven Louis Foundation in Canada. In his remarks, Steven challenged us caregivers to do more advocacy on the issue of the burden of care being on women who are not even compensated by the end of the day. Steven pointed out that this is a violation of the rights of women and those who pretend to promote gender equality should be more practical than just talking about it. On his part Steven informed us that the Steven Lewis Foundation has taken a stand not to fund any HBC programs unless women carers are paid. Bravo!
In the main conference zone, I liked a presentation by one doctor from Mozambique who shared about how they are using Community ART groups to enhance adherence to treatment. The idea is to take the patients as partners in care not just recipients of the care and their approach has proved that this improves the uptake and adherence to ART. The community ART groups monitor themselves and take turns to go to the clinic for a refills which is also cost effective as they contribute transport money for just one person (often the one who has not been feeling well so that she/he can also go through medical check up). I found this innovativeness worthy of replicating as we struggle with treatment adherence in most communities due to lack support and long distance to the clinic among other issues.
There was so much to learn from the conference and it would be ungrateful of me if I do not thank Cordaid for inviting the Episcopal Conference of Malawi to be part of its delegation to Vienna, AIDS 2010. The knowledge gained will be shared with all diocesan health commissions so that the new ideas can be introduced in our current and future programs. Definite areas that we will improve based on this experience are on more involvement of youth in our programs; emphasis on compensation for women caregivers and improve on follow up measures for treatment adherence.
In future, I hope we will be able to acquire extra funding so that ECM can be represented by more individuals as there is more to learn and share. This is evidenced by the number of presentations that I had to make as ECM representative and the number of relevant sessions that I had to attend. Already planning for the next IAC!