PCB Programme Coordinating Board

GENEVA, 12 December 2016—At its 39th meeting, the UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board welcomed the significant progress made in the response to HIV and stressed the need for sustained investment, strengthened commitment, partnerships and innovation to enable more countries to accelerate the delivery of services to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030.

In his opening address, the Executive Director of UNAIDS, Michel Sidibé, took stock of a momentous year for the AIDS response, during which access to antiretroviral therapy expanded to more than 18 million people and more countries adopted a Fast-Track response to ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030. A Fast-Track response includes a set of measurable targets that must be reached by 2020 in order for the world to be on course to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030.

Mr Sidibé underlined the need to continue to respond to the underlying issues that increase the vulnerability of people to HIV infection, particularly specific groups of people, including young women and adolescent girls and key populations, such as sex workers, transgender people, gay men and other men who have sex with men, prisoners and people who inject drugs. He announced plans for a new prevention coalition across different initiatives and among different leaders, implementers and community representatives committed to closing the prevention gap.  

Despite the progress made in responding to HIV, Mr Sidibé warned of emerging global challenges that threaten to blow the Fast-Track response off course.

“It is essential that countries continue to have access to long-term, predictable and sustainable resources,” said Mr Sidibé. “If this is not the case, they will not be able to sustain and accelerate their responses to HIV and there could be a rebound of the AIDS epidemic in the coming years.”

During its three-day meeting, the Board noted the shortfall of funding commitments to support UNAIDS’ work and emphasized the need for the Joint Programme to be fully funded. At the same time, the Board called for the intensification of efforts to eliminate new infections among children and keep their mothers alive, so as to reach the targets set out in the 2016 Political Declaration on Ending AIDS and the Start Free Stay Free AIDS Free framework. The Board welcomed the successful replenishment of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and called for increased investment in community-based health service delivery and in civil society partners involved in the AIDS response, as well as for the strengthening of other measures designed to enhance community involvement.

The Board emphasized that community leadership will become even more important under the Sustainable Development Goals, which require inclusive responses and reaching the people most at risk of being left behind. Community responses have been in the vanguard of the AIDS response from the very beginning, but are not a substitute for national responses; rather, they constitute an integral component of evidence-informed national implementation plans, in particular for a Fast-Track response.

During the dedicated thematic day, the Board focused on the state of the epidemic among people living with HIV and at risk of acquiring HIV aged 50 years and above, the impact of ageing with HIV and related health and social sector responses. There was broad consensus for the need to support programmes and health system structures to comprehensively meet the needs of a growing number of people living with HIV who are aged 50 or over.

Representatives of Member States, international organizations, civil society and nongovernmental organizations attended the meeting, which was chaired by Switzerland. Ghana served as Vice-Chair and Ecuador as rapporteur.

The UNAIDS Executive Director’s report to the Board and the Board’s decisions can be found at unaids.org. 

UNAIDS

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) leads and inspires the world to achieve its shared vision of zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths. UNAIDS unites the efforts of 11 UN organizations—UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, UNDP, UNFPA, UNODC, UN Women, ILO, UNESCO, WHO and the World Bank—and works closely with global and national partners towards ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. Learn more at unaids.org and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

The 39th meeting of the UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board is taking place in Geneva, Switzerland, from 6 to 8 December.

During the opening session, UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé gave an update on the progress made in the AIDS response and outlined the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

Mr Sidibé spoke about the need to properly fund the AIDS response, especially civil society, in order to put the world on the Fast-Track to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. He also stressed the need to focus on HIV prevention and to provide adequate HIV services to key populations at higher risk in order to leave no one behind.

The thematic segment of the meeting will take place on the last day and will focus on the state of the epidemic among people living with HIV and at risk of acquiring HIV aged 50 and above, the impact of ageing with HIV, including for key populations and women living with HIV, and identify areas of health and social sector responses for people aged 50 and above.

The 39th meeting of the UNAIDS Board is being chaired by Switzerland, with Ghana acting as Vice-Chair and Ecuador as rapporteur.

The role of communities is essential in responding to the AIDS epidemic. Community advocacy, service delivery and participation in decision-making have shaped every aspect of the global AIDS response. Yet many community networks and civil society organizations are struggling to fund their work and too often community voices are not meaningfully included in policy dialogue, in particular the voices of key populations.

To identify specific steps to better include and finance community responses, more than 20 speakers came together in Geneva, Switzerland, on 30 June at the thematic day of the UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board. The thematic session was entitled “The role of communities in ending AIDS by 2030” and included speakers from civil society, governments, development partners and academia.

While community responses need to be reinforced, including community-based service delivery and advocacy, many community organizations are not receiving the support they need to engage fully. In a recent UNAIDS survey of civil society organizations, 42% of respondents reported a decrease in their budgets since 2013, while a further 26% said their budgets had remained flat. Smaller organizations reported suffering most from cuts, while funding decreased or remained flat for every type of activity. Organizations focused on advocacy were worst affected.

There is strong evidence that community responses produce results and UNAIDS recognizes that there is an urgent need for them to be scaled up and fully integrated into national responses. Funding policies, national regulatory frameworks and inhibiting legal environments need to be reviewed to remove barriers that prevent the flow of funding from national and international sources to civil society organizations. Participants stressed that community responses must be fully integrated and become equal partners in delivering equitable, evidence-informed, gender-responsive and accessible services to all people who need them.

Over the past year, UNAIDS has issued a range of reports on the need for greater inclusion of, and investment in, community responses, including Governments fund communities, Invest in Advocacy, Stronger together, Communities deliver and Community-based antiretroviral therapy delivery.

GENEVA, 1 July 2016—At its 38th meeting, the UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board has stressed the need for accelerated action, increased investment, intensified partnerships and innovation in community-led service delivery to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030.

The meeting took place just weeks after the adoption by United Nations Member States of a new Political Declaration on Ending AIDS, which called on countries to Fast-Track their response to HIV over the coming years to reach a set of measurable targets by 2020. Achieving these targets is critical to putting the world on course to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.

In his opening address, the Executive Director of UNAIDS, Michel Sidibé, described the Political Declaration agreed in New York as bold, ambitious, forward-looking and balanced. He said success in reaching the Political Declaration’s targets required an inclusive approach that left no one behind, respect for everyone’s right to access quality sexual and reproductive health and rights, innovative and appropriate implementation of programmes and services to meet the needs of variously affected regions and key populations and increased and front-loaded investments for the AIDS response.

“The commitment to ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030 must be underpinned by the full respect for people’s human rights, including their access to quality sexual and reproductive health and rights,” said Mr Sidibé. “The involvement of people living with and affected by the epidemic is essential in implementing an effective and fully funded response rooted in the community and in ensuring a strong interface between service providers and people most affected by HIV.”

The Board also approved a revised Unified Budget, Results and Accountability Framework (UBRAF) for 2016–2021 and emphasized the importance of the Joint Programme in translating the UNAIDS 2016–2021 Strategy into action at the national, regional and global levels. However, there remains a shortfall of 30% in 2016 between funding commitments made to date and the resources required to fully implement the Strategy in support of people living with or affected by HIV. The Board encouraged donor governments to make multi-year contributions towards the 2016–2021 UBRAF and urged UNAIDS to continue expanding its donor base. During the meeting, the United States of America announced it intended to extend its agreement with UNAIDS for an additional five years, and as part of this extension, intended to further its funding collaboration with UNAIDS.

During the dedicated thematic day, the Board further explored the key role of communities in ending AIDS by 2030, with governments urged to leverage the skills, knowledge and experience of civil society to maximize impact. There was broad consensus that there would be no end to the AIDS epidemic by 2030 without sustained and intensified investment in community-led responses to the epidemic in regions and among groups of people most affected, including sex workers, gay men and other men who have sex with men, people who inject drugs, transgender people and prisoners.

Representatives of Member States, international organizations, civil society and nongovernmental organizations attended the meeting, which was chaired by Switzerland. Ghana served as Vice-Chair and Ecuador as Rapporteur.

The UNAIDS Executive Director’s report to the Board and the Board’s decisions can be found at unaids.org.

UNAIDS

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) leads and inspires the world to achieve its shared vision of zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths. UNAIDS unites the efforts of 11 UN organizations—UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, UNDP, UNFPA, UNODC, UN Women, ILO, UNESCO, WHO and the World Bank—and works closely with global and national partners towards ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. Learn more at unaids.org and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

The 38th meeting of the UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board is taking place in Geneva, Switzerland, from 28 to 30 June.

During the opening session, UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé gave an update on the progress made in the AIDS response and outlined the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

Mr Sidibé spoke about the need to properly fund the AIDS response in order to put the world on the Fast-Track to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. He also stressed the need to provide adequate HIV services to key populations at higher risk in order to leave no one behind.

The thematic segment of the meeting will take place on the last day and will focus on the role of communities in ending AIDS by 2030.

The 38th meeting of the UNAIDS Board is being chaired by Switzerland, with Ghana acting as Vice-Chair and Ecuador as rapporteur.

As Ghana starts its term as the newly elected Vice-Chair of the UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board (PCB) for 2016, the President, John Dramani Mahama, underlined how increased advocacy, partnership and investment in the AIDS response will bring results that go beyond health. Such efforts will also improve broader gender, rights and development outcomes across the sustainable development agenda.

President Mahama said during discussions with visiting UNAIDS Deputy Executive Director Jan Beagle that complacency needs to be addressed by expanding evidence-informed and rights-based initiatives, programmes and services. Scaling up capacity for local production of antiretroviral therapy is one way.

Ghana has made significant strides in its AIDS response through integrated multisectoral HIV responses that provide lessons learned for western Africa. Ghana reduced new HIV infections by 53% between 2001 and 2014 and AIDS-related deaths by 45% in the same period. According to 2008 and 2014 demographic and health surveys, HIV testing among women almost doubled between 2008 and 2014.

While in Ghana, Ms Beagle met with key stakeholders from government, civil society and international partners to prepare the country’s Vice-Chairmanship of the PCB and its role at the UN General Assembly High-Level Meeting on Ending AIDS.

Welcoming Ghana’s new role within the PCB, Ms Beagle commended the country’s comprehensive and cross-sectoral approach, which has shown particular collaboration across government sectors of health, education, gender, culture and justice. She noted the importance of continued focus on addressing social drivers of HIV in Ghana and the broader western Africa region, underlining the need for particular populations at highest risk, including, critically, adolescent girls.

Minister of Health Alexander Segbefia underlined that by focusing the response in locations and among populations where HIV risk and vulnerability is highest, Ghana will be able to build on the gains made, sustain momentum and move towards an AIDS-free generation. 

GENEVA, 30 October 2015—At its 37th meeting, the UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board adopted a new strategy to end the AIDS epidemic as a public health threat by 2030. The UNAIDS 2016–2021 Strategy is one of the first in the United Nations system to be aligned to the Sustainable Development Goals, which set the framework for global development policy over the next 15 years, including ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030. 

With a universal agenda, firmly grounded in evidence and rights-based approaches, the strategy maps out the UNAIDS Fast-Track approach to accelerate the AIDS response over the next five years to reach critical HIV prevention and treatment targets and achieve zero discrimination. Members of the Board from across all regions called the strategy bold, ambitious, yet achievable, and praised the highly inclusive and consultative process to develop it.

In his opening address, the Executive Director of UNAIDS, Michel Sidibé, described the strategy as an urgent call to front-load investment, to close the testing gap, to increase focus and financing for HIV prevention and to protect the health of the 22 million people living with HIV who are not yet accessing treatment. He said that the strategy would be an instrument for social justice and dignity.

“Our transformative strategy pushes us to cover more ground than ever before,” said Mr Sidibé. “It obliges us to address the critical linkages between health, injustice, inequality, poverty and conflict.”   

The Board also approved UNAIDS’ operational framework and the Unified Budget, Results and Accountability Framework (UBRAF) for 2016–2021, which will translate the strategy into action at the national, regional and global levels. The strategy and UBRAF are powerful tools to accelerate the global AIDS response and guide the work of the Joint Programme.

The Board underlined the importance of innovation and partnership in tackling complex interconnected development and health challenges and stressed that the space the strategy and UNAIDS provides for discussion is unique.

During the dedicated thematic day, the Board discussed the importance of shared responsibility and global solidarity for an effective, equitable and sustainable HIV response. It was agreed that the most critical next step for achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals will be to have clarity on the means of implementation. Participants emphasized that multisectorality and equitable, transparent and inclusive governance are central bases for effective shared responsibility and global solidarity, and that the AIDS response—and in particular UNAIDS—provides an important model to be replicated for other health, development, gender and rights outcomes.

Representatives of Member States, international organizations, civil society and nongovernmental organizations attended the meeting, which was chaired by David Parirenyatwa, Minister of Health and Child Care of Zimbabwe. Switzerland served as Vice-Chair and Ukraine as Rapporteur. At the meeting, Switzerland was elected as the 2016 Chair, Ghana as Vice-Chair and Ecuador as Rapporteur.

The UNAIDS Executive Director’s report to the Board and the Board’s decisions can be found at unaids.org.

UNAIDS

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) leads and inspires the world to achieve its shared vision of zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths. UNAIDS unites the efforts of 11 UN organizations—UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, UNDP, UNFPA, UNODC, UN Women, ILO, UNESCO, WHO and the World Bank—and works closely with global and national partners towards ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. Learn more at unaids.org and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

The UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board called for stronger global solidarity and shared responsibility to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030 during a thematic segment held on 28 October in Geneva, Switzerland.

The thematic session, part of the Board’s 37th meeting, brought together distinguished speakers representing governments, civil society, the private sector and the international community to inform the discussion around a sustainable AIDS response.

In his keynote address, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, Chief Executive Officer of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) Planning and Coordinating Agency said that the unique governance mechanism that made the AIDS response successful should be replicated in broader health issues.

Participants agreed that achieving AIDS-related targets in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) can only be done through a Fast-Track approach which is adequately funded, equitable and addresses the needs of key populations at higher risk of HIV infection.

In recent years, several countries have been increasing domestic AIDS investments through various mechanisms, including levies, and have focused resources on high impact programmes. But significant additional funding will be required to achieve the 90-90-90 treatment target by 2020.

Participants agreed that community responses are central to the governance and implementation of the AIDS response and that ensuring the effective participation of civil society, people living with HIV and other key populations in policy development mechanisms is essential.

“Strategic investments in community responses will not happen without structural changes in the way the governments and donors allocate funds. We need a systematic way to ensure that funding reaches community groups,” said Alessandra Nilo, Co-founder and Executive Director of Gestos, an AIDS organization located in Brazil,. She added, “Indicators of inclusion, empowerment of all people, transparency, promotion and guarantee of rights-based policies will be fundamental.”

In closing the session, Luiz Loures, UNAIDS Deputy Executive Director noted that the key to achievement of the SDG targets lies in innovation in the means of implementation. Strengthening the components of shared responsibility that are financing and governance to ensure efficiency will be critical factors to reaching an End of AIDS where no one is left behind.