Feature Story

At the 6 th annual session of Burkina Faso’s National AIDS Commission, President Blaise Compaoré underlined his personal commitment to fighting AIDS as he chaired the one-day session and called for a scaling-up of the AIDS response towards universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support in the country.

The annual session brought together actors involved in the country’s AIDS response to discuss ways forward in coordination of the response, to outline achievements in 2006 and to agree on action to strengthen AIDS action in Burkina Faso.

The President of Burkina Faso, who also serves as President of the National AIDS Commission, welcomed participants and highlighted Burkina Faso’s commitment to tackling AIDS issues and the necessity to make the country’s response an inclusive one, involving partners from all sectors of society. He outlined the significant results that had been achieved, particularly in Burkina Faso’s HIV prevention strategy, and thanked both public and private sectors for their hard work in the area of prevention.

UNAIDS Director of Country and Regional Support, Michel Sidibe, attended the session and heralded the President’s concrete commitment to AIDS. “The participation of President Compaoré is an example of truly exceptional leadership on AIDS—chairing for 10 hours of the meeting, engaging and motivating all sectors of the response and driving action forward,” he said.

“Burkina Faso is on the right road. The challenge now is to coordinate these efforts to make the response as effective as possible and to make the goal of universal access to HIV prevention, treatment care and support a reality. We at UNAIDS will do all we can to support Burkina Faso in doing this,” he added.

The session was well represented with around 200 people from different sectors of the AIDS response in Burkina Faso including ministers, parliamentary representatives, religious groups, youth groups, women’s organisations, associations of people living with HIV, technical and financial partners, private sector representatives and regional governors. In addition, representatives from National AIDS Commissions from the neighbouring countries of Benin, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo were present at the session as well as the UNAIDS Regional Support Team for West and Central Africa.

During the meeting participants reported on and analysed data from 2006 and made specific recommendations in the areas of planning, coordination and technical support; transfer of resources and monitoring and evaluation of the epidemic for 2007 and beyond.

In a communiqué finale issued at the close of the meeting, the National AIDS Commission underlined the recommendations for the country to reinforce coordination and partnerships within the response and to give greater focus and develop specific strategies on the issue of gender and AIDS, fighting stigma and discrimination and improving paediatric treatment and care.

“Burkina Faso has made great progress in the response to AIDS over recent years and the results are encouraging, we have seen a levelling off––and in some urban sites a decline––in HIV prevalence,” said UNAIDS Country Coordinator for Burkina Faso, Mamadou Sakho Lamine. “However, Burkina Faso still has a serious generalised epidemic, increasingly women are becoming infected and there is evidence that new infections are also on the rise among young people. There is still much to be done,” he added.

At the close of the session, President Compaoré called on participants to ‘double their efforts in the fight against AIDS’ and congratulated them on constructive suggestions and recommendations which will help strengthen the AIDS response in Burkina Faso.