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Today, March 14, 2011, over eighty persons will arrive in Nassau, Bahamas for the Caribbean Regional HIV Prevention Summit.
The summit will be held from March 15-17, 2011 to among other things (1) increase awareness and agreement on the important of providing effective, focused, and targeted prevention interventions for MARPs and OVPs; (2) increase knowledge of evidence-based HIV prevention strategies; and (3) create linkages between HIV prevention experts on MARPs and OVPs with program practitioners in the Caribbean.
Generally, MARPs include sex workers (SW), men who have sex with men (MSM), intravenous drug users (IDU) and clients of sex workers (UNAIDS). OVPs tend to be high-risk youth, mobile populations (eg migrants), prisoners, and members of the military and uniformed services.
Participants at the summit representing several government agencies, National AIDS Programmes, technical and policy experts, civil society organisations, program implementers for most-at-risk populations (MARPs) and other vulnerable populations (OVPs), multi-lateral and bi-lateral and regional organisations, and representatives from local organisations and networks supporting MARPs and persons living with HIV. These individuals have been selected from the 12 Caribbean Regional Program Partnership Framework countries and the bilateral PEPFAR programmes in Haiti, Dominican Republic and Guyana.
Within the context of Jamaica, this is an important summit to ensure that there is greater synergy between the National Health Programme and civil society to capitalize on the opportunities to halt and reverse the spread of HIV and AIDS by 2015. This is crucial as funding for HIV and AIDS programmes such as the Global Fund come to an end in the next 3-5 years.
I will be blogging daily about the summit so stay tuned!
Quick Facts (Jamaica) – HIV Prevalence
MSM – 32% (According to amfAR (2008) this is the second highest worldwide)
Prison Inmates – 3.5%
STI Clinic attendees – 3.4%
Crack cocaine users – 5%
Sex Workers – 5%
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