(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) The new Governments in Jamaica and Haiti which together account for approximately 71 percent of People living with HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean, have agreed to send high level representatives to the UN High Level Meeting (UN HLM) on HIV/AIDS on June 8-10, 2016 in New York. This was revealed during a joint mission held 3-9 April 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 UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon has issued invitations to all Caribbean Heads of Government to participate in the UN HLM which is held every 5 years. This year, the UN HLM will review the progress made in coping with the disease since the last event in 2011 and will formulate a political declaration charting the steps that are required to end the epidemic by 2030 . This is in keeping with the resolution establishing the Sustainable Development Goals at the UN General Assembly in September 2015.
The missions included consultations with President Jocelerme Privert, Mr. Pierrot Delienne, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Religious Affairs, and Dr Daphnee Benoit Delsoin, Minister of Health in Haiti, and Senator Kamina Johnson Smith, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Dr. Christopher Tufton, Minister of Health and Hon Delroy Chuck, Minister of Justice, Jamaica. It was recognized that while much progress has been made — sharpest regional reduction in HIV incidence by 49 percent; deaths from AIDS reduced by 52 percent; and the number of persons living with AIDS on ARVs increased from under 10 percent to approximately 44 percent over the past 10 years — much more is required to be done in the next five years to eradicate AIDS.
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 UN HLM, 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. According to the President of Haiti “all sectors must be involved and there is need for sustainable funding and technical support”.
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. 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. Hence, 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. 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 UN HLM, 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. Edward Greene.
