Promising Practices- Stay Alive at the Uganda AIDS Commission Conference
Uganda has been at the forefront of the AIDS response, and therefore the entire world looks to Uganda’s leadership in tackling emerging challenges. 15 years ago Uganda introduced the multi-sect oral approach, but there is again a critical phase of response needed with the second generation challenges, the advent of anti-retroviral treatment, the new prevention technologies and the rising incidents. All of these require new strategies to realize positive outcomes.
The National AIDS Conference provides an exciting opportunity for practitioners, policy makers and researchers to share what they know and identify how they can work together to address emerging challenges, enrich the National Priority Action Plan and improve AIDS outcomes. The conference helps identify the knowledge gaps and how to address them, as well as urges improved implementation, confrontation of the difficult issues that drive the epidemic, and demonstration of the importance of sustaining the AIDS response.
On March 26th, the Vice-President of Uganda opened the conference with a speech about children and the AIDS conference. The Stay Alive group was very excited to be part of a growing coalition of partners aimed at ensuring the needs of children are addressed as part of the national HIV and AIDS response.
The needs of children were summarized by the four Ps:
• Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission of HIV
• Pediatric Care and Support
• Primary prevention
• Protection, care, and support of orphans and vulnerable children
The conference called for a strong coalition advocating for increased attention to the needs of children as part of the national HIV/AIDS response. The impact of the conference would only be as good as the collective participation. Participating organizations were asked to look at it as a beginning of a process that will lead to better protection, care and support for children, adolescents and young people in Uganda.
New trends of the epidemic were presented and participating groups were asked to address their interventions to the trends. All stake holders agreed that prevention should be the mainstay of the epidemic but remarked on obstacles such as:
• Persons looking at the epidemic as normal (not a scare anymore)
• Shift of the epidemic from the adolescents to married couples
• Deteriorating behavioral indicators
• Conflict in delivery of prevention intervention
• Missed opportunities in care and prevention
• Limited focus on causes of vulnerability
• Limited utilization of existing structures and systems
The exhibition was a great networking opportunity. The Stay Alive representatives were able to exhibit Stay Alive activities to other partners and were proud to be one of the few organizations that targets young children who are not yet sexually active. 83 organizations visited the Stay Alive booth, and a large number of those expressed interests in the program. Uganda Catholic Secretariat and the Medical Council Bureau have called to fix appointments for further discussions of the program.
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