Western Central Europe

The Permanent Mission of the Czech Republic to the United Nations Office and other International Organizations at Geneva and UNAIDS have opened an exhibition celebrating the contribution that scientists have made to advancing medicine and the treatment of viral diseases such as AIDS. The exhibition, which opened on 6 December, is being held at UNAIDS headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

Created by Jáchym Šerých, the exhibition focuses on the work of Czech scientist Antonín Holý, who dedicated his life to developing medicines used to treat HIV, hepatitis B, herpes and other viral diseases. The core of the exhibition is a three-dimensional model of a football symbolizing a fullerene—a molecule of carbon. It captures moments in the private and professional life of Mr Holý.

Speaking at the opening, Vinay P. Saldanha, UNAIDS Regional Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, said, “The work of scientists like Antonín Holý transformed the view that being HIV-positive was a death sentence into the reality of a long life with dignity for people living with HIV.”

As of June 2016, 18.2 million people were on antiretroviral therapy in the world, a number that was unthinkable when the epidemic started, more than 30 years ago. No treatment was available at the beginning, but thanks to the tireless work of scientists to find innovative solutions together with communities, medicines were developed to save the lives of people living with HIV.

Jan Kára, Permanent Representative of the Czech Republic, said, “Antonín Holý was a man of vision and strong determination, who made alliances and was pragmatic. His inventions made a difference in fighting viral diseases like AIDS.”

Medicines evolved through time. From eight pills a day in 2001, treatment now involves taking one pill a day. Treatment has saved millions of lives, has improved the health of people living with HIV and has helped prevent the transmission of HIV.

Zdeněk Havlas, Honorary Chair of the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry, worked with Mr Holý. He said, “The approval of one medicine is a relatively rare event. Antonín Holý started with antiretroviral medicines in the 1990s and kept on developing other medicines, for example to treat hepatitis B.” By doing so, Mr Havlas said his colleague contributed to “making the lives of millions and millions of people better and even possible.”

What does the future hold? Communities around the world count on scientists to carry on their research to make sure that AIDS is no longer a public health threat. There is hope that a cure and a vaccine for AIDS will be found soon. 

On the eve of World AIDS Day, STOPAIDS, with support from the United Kingdom All-Party Parliamentary Group on HIV & AIDS, organized an event to discuss the role of the United Kingdom in the global AIDS response.

The participants discussed the role that the leadership of the United Kingdom, one of the largest donors to the international response to HIV, can play in keeping the response on the right trajectory to realize the UNAIDS Fast-Track Targets and ultimately end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.

Opening the event, Lord Bates, Minister of State at the Department for International Development, took stock of the United Kingdom’s contribution to the global AIDS response to date and the steps the country needs to take to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030.

The participants stressed the need for greater focus and support for key populations at higher risk of HIV infection, ensuring that no one is left behind. Improving access to services for all people, harnessing technology and innovation to scale up and extend services and putting people at the centre by moving towards more integrated services were some of the key areas identified to take the response forward.

UNAIDS emphasized the need for continued political and financial commitment, and stressed that although significant progress has been made in the AIDS response, there is still a financial gap of US$ 6 billion that urgently needs to be addressed.

UNAIDS Deputy Executive Director Luiz Loures, Lord Collins, Shadow International Development Spokesperson in the House of Lords, Anne Aslett, Executive Director of the Elton John AIDS Foundation, and Ndaba Mandela, founder of the Africa Rising Foundation and Mandela Project, were among the participants.

UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé delivered keynote remarks at the opening of the World Cancer Congress in Paris, France, on 31 October. This year more than 3500 leaders, cancer experts and activists gathered together under the theme “Mobilize action—inspire change”.

Leveraging the experience and innovative activism of more than three decades of the AIDS response, Mr Sidibé called for greater mobilization and the breaking down of silos between programmes and services to deliver comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services for women and girls. He highlighted that the 2016 Political Declaration on Ending AIDS and the UNAIDS 2016–2021 Strategy reflect strong global commitments to scaling up integrated health services to address coinfections and co-morbidities, including the prevention, screening and treatment of sexually transmitted infections and cervical cancer.

In his speech he pointed out that women living with HIV are up to five times more likely to develop cervical cancer than other women. Mr Sidibé stressed that cervical cancer is highly preventable with the human papillomavirus vaccine (HPV) and generally curable if diagnosed and treated early. Despite that, every year 528 000 women are newly diagnosed with cervical cancer and more than 266 000 women die needlessly from the disease, 90% of whom live in low- and-middle-income countries.

Mr Sidibé said that currently only 1 in 10 girls in low- and middle-income countries have access to the HPV vaccine, compared with 9 in 10 girls in high-income countries. This, he said, starkly exposes the links between disease, gender inequality, poverty, lack of rights and poor access to essential health services.

Mr Sidibé congratulated the organizers, the Union for International Cancer Control, la Ligue contre le cancer and Alliance des Ligues Francophones Africaines et Méditerranéennes contre le cancer, for organizing the congress and actively engaging the HIV community. He also commended the President of France, François Hollande, for his commitment to global cancer control. 

Video: French President François Hollande says we can learn a lot from the AIDS response when it comes to cancer.

France’s first safe injecting site for people who inject drugs has opened in Paris.

Linked to the city’s Lariboisière Hospital, the facility can accommodate up to 400 people a day and is staffed by a full team of doctors, nurses and social workers. It is made up of three areas: a waiting room, a consumption room and a place where people can rest before leaving the site.

The aim of the facility, which is open to adults aged 18 and over, is to lessen the risks associated with injecting drug use, including HIV infection. Research shows that supervised injection sites also reduce crime and other social disorders linked to the public consumption of drugs.

The UNAIDS Executive Director, Michel Sidibé, congratulated France’s Minister of Health, Marisol Touraine, and the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, on the opening of the site.

Additional drug consumption rooms are planned to open in other French cities, including Strasbourg and Bordeaux, in the near future.

Paris is a founder signatory of the Paris Declaration, which commits cities to ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030 by adopting a Fast-Track approach to their HIV epidemics.

The Government of Belgium and UNAIDS have signed a new multi-year funding agreement for 2017–2020. The agreement was formalized on 24 June in Brussels, Belgium, by UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé and Alexander De Croo, Deputy Prime Minister of Belgium and Minister of Development Cooperation.

The new agreement renews Belgium’s contribution to UNAIDS, which remains at €4 million per year until 2020—years that are crucial to achieving the Fast-Track Targets and putting the world on track towards ending the global AIDS epidemic as a public health threat by 2030.

UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé commended Belgium for its long-standing support to UNAIDS and its political leadership in the global AIDS response. Belgium has been a key partner in the global AIDS response since the beginning of the epidemic and the country is among UNAIDS’ strongest allies on issues such as the promotion of human rights in the context of HIV, including sexual and reproductive health and rights.

A meeting has been held at the Vatican to finalize a road map to improve access to HIV treatment for children. The meeting, held on 16 and 17 May, was a follow-up to an earlier meeting in April that explored ways to provide greater access to testing and treatment services for diseases such as HIV, tuberculosis and hepatitis. 

Both meetings were hosted by Cardinal Peter Turkson, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. Participants included representatives of national governments, faith-based organizations and people living with HIV, UNAIDS Deputy Executive Director Luiz Loures and the United States Global AIDS Coordinator, Ambassador Deborah Birx.

The road map will be presented at the United Nations General Assembly High-Level Meeting on Ending AIDS, to be held in New York, United States of America, from 8 to 10 June.

Caritas Internationalis recently brought together global partners in two events to discuss the role of faith-based organizations and the private sector in closing the global HIV testing and treatment gap for children living with HIV. The meetings, held in the Vatican City from 11 to 15 April, were co-organized with UNAIDS, the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the Vatican’s Bambino Gesù paediatric hospital.

Cardinal Peter Turkson, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, hosted and opened a high-level meeting with representatives of the private sector, including pharmaceutical and diagnostics companies, faith-based organizations responding to HIV, people living with HIV, national governments, the United Nations and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

In his opening remarks to the meeting, the Cardinal drew from Pope Francis’ pastoral letter to the world (the encyclical Laudato si’). In the letter, the Pope challenges the world to take renewed and coordinated action against factors that result in the deterioration of the natural and social environment, such as climate change, pandemics, poverty, conflict and violence.

In a separate statement, Pope Francis specifically called on the meeting participants to find “new possibilities of providing greater access to life-saving diagnosis and treatment” for children. At the end of the meeting, the participants committed themselves to find collective solutions, such as multipartner agreements to encourage more research on HIV treatment for children, to accelerate the process of testing, approving and registering new HIV medicines for children, to find innovative solutions to prevent medicine and supply stock-outs and to strengthen health system. The participants agreed to reconvene in order to finalize a road map to improve access to HIV treatment for all.

In a separate three-day consultation on paediatric HIV, the participants debated and agreed upon the most urgent actions needed to strengthen equitable access to testing and treatment for children living with HIV. That event was attended by more than 80 participants, mainly from sub-Saharan Africa, but also from countries as far afield as Armenia, Colombia, India and Viet Nam, as well as representatives of national and multilateral agencies.

Deborah Birx, PEPFAR Global AIDS Coordinator, and Luiz Loures, Deputy Executive Director of UNAIDS, presented to the consultation an overview of the state of the HIV epidemic among children and the global response to date. Discussions focused on the current challenges in reaching children with HIV testing and treatment.

In order to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030, it was agreed that there is an urgent need to Fast-Track access to HIV testing, prevention and care services and treatment for all. Attention was given to the central role played by faith-based organizations in the delivery of community-based HIV and other health services to children and their extended families. Such organizations can often reach the populations that are in greatest need but that have the poorest access to HIV services.

Caritas Internationalis will present the recommendations of the three-day consultation to the United Nations General Assembly High-Level Meeting on Ending AIDS, to be held in New York, United States of America, from 8 to 10 June.

On 15 February, on the margins of the 66th Berlin International Film Festival, UNAIDS launched the ProTest HIV campaign.

The event was held to raise HIV awareness among young people in Berlin and to engage them in the response to HIV through #ProTESTHIV and #GenEndit. It attracted young people from across Germany to engage with representatives of the German Government and the German AIDS organization AIDS Hilfe and with Kweku Mandela, AIDS activist and grandson of Nelson Mandela. The participants listened to the moving testimony of Bjorn Beck, the community representative of people living with HIV on the board of AIDS Hilfe, who not only inspired the audience but also reminded everyone why it is essential to keep younger generations engaged in the AIDS response.

The world has committed to ending the AIDS epidemic as a public health threat by 2030 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. Almost 37 million people around the world were living with HIV in 2014—half of whom did not know that they are HIV-positive.

HIV testing is key to preventing and treating HIV. UNAIDS is working with young people to ensure they have the right information and access to HIV testing, prevention and treatment services. By raising awareness through the ProTest HIV campaign, UNAIDS is empowering young people take action and make informed decisions.

The German Healthcare Partnership (GHP) celebrated its five-year anniversary on 24 November in Berlin, Germany. GHP was founded in 2010 by the German Federation of Industries and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development to strengthen health systems in developing countries.

Speaking at the event, UNAIDS Deputy Executive Director Luiz Loures pointed out that the AIDS response has been unique in terms of the partnerships it has created, bringing together political commitment, social mobilization and science. He also highlighted the added value of private sector engagement in public health and especially in the context of HIV, where it has made significant contributions in terms of innovation, technical knowledge and resources.

The event was also attended by Parliamentary State Secretary and Vice Minister of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, Brigitte Zypries and Parliamentary State Secretary and Vice Minister of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development,  Thomas Silberhorn, who stressed that funding for development and cooperation is important, but that the private sector also needs to invest in improving health infrastructure, education and capacity-building, which are all key elements of health systems strengthening.

Mr Loures met with Tobias Bergner, Coordinator for the Foreign Policy Dimension of Global Health Issues for the German Foreign Office, and representatives of the Federal Ministry of Health. He praised Germany’s leadership on global health and its engagement with regard to global health architecture reform and encouraged Germany’s continued commitment to ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030.

While in Berlin, Mr Loures also presented the 2015 UNAIDS World AIDS Day report, together with Elisabeth Pott, Chief Executive Officer of the German AIDS Foundation.

UNAIDS Deputy Executive Director Luiz Loures met with Ton Coenen, Executive Director of AIDS Fonds, on 13 November to discuss the current funding mechanisms for community organizations and to explore how UNAIDS can be further engaged in supporting civil society efforts.  

Ideas discussed included how UNAIDS could help channel new funding to national civil society groups and convene stakeholders to identify policy changes that would increase strategic investment in community-based work.

The urgent need for increased financial investment in community-based services and advocacy was one of the main themes discussed at the UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board (PCB) meeting in October. At the PCB, UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé committed to expanding UNAIDS’s efforts in support of funding for community responses.