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The
body responsible for ensuring the standard of the Caribbean
Red Cross’ “Together
We Can” (TWC) peer education programme is hoping to
have two new members by 2008.
At its July meeting in Panama,
the Regional Faculty decided that in order to operate better,
two positions needed to be filled – a person living
with HIV and AIDS (PLWHA) and a youth member (25 years
or younger).
The PLWHA is likely to be sought from
regional partner, Caribbean Regional Network of persons living
with AIDS (CRN+).
Glenys Gonzales, former vice chair
of CARAN has been hired as a consultant to oversee the
corrections, printing and roll out of the Monitoring and
Evaluation Toolkit in eight priority National Societies
in the Caribbean and Central America – Guyana, Belize,
Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Panama, Guatemala, El Salvador
and Honduras.
The other key points coming out of the July Faculty meeting
are:
- The Faculty will take the lead in recommending trainings
to take place in countries where needed;
- Training has been going well in Central America and as
of 2006 three South American countries have come on board
with the programme. Brazil is currently in the process
of translating the manual to Portuguese;
- The Faculty will build the capacity of Regional Trainers
(RT) so a few may be able to move up into the Regional
Faculty. Capacity building/refresher for RTs is expected
to take place in April or May 2008;
- Nominations for persons to fill the above mentioned Faculty
positions should be in by the next meeting carded for October;
- The Faculty will take a more
active role on the
TWC online forum as a way of encouraging participation
by members and;
- RF to increase capacity by being trained in Spanish.
New HIV and AIDS Officer at Caribbean Regional Representation
Office
The Federation’s Caribbean Regional Representation
Office based in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad welcomed a new HIV
and AIDS Officer in July – Dylis McDonald.
The position was left vacant for
six months following the resignation of Mobafa Baker in
December 2006. Dylis will be involved mainly in regional
HIV programmes and campaigns like “Faces” and
TWC, as well as other health related programmes.
One of the major HIV projects Dylis will be involved in,
is the scaling up of the Global Alliance on HIV in the region.
The Caribbean National Societies
of Haiti, Jamaica, Belize and Guyana and others from Central
and South America, met in Panama from September 5 – 9
to discuss how the scaling up will be effected in their
respective territories.
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| HIV
and AIDS Officer, Dylis McDonald |
Dr
Mukesh Kapila, special representative on HIV
and AIDS from the International Federation,
noted during an August 8 media conference in
Jamaica that “we need to do much more
and do much better if we are to efficiently
tackle the issue of HIV and AIDS.”
Jamaica was the first
stop of his Americas visit – Haiti and
Panama were the other countries to promote
the meeting, which allowed him to learn about
the situation of HIV in Latin America and the
Caribbean, and their needs and challenges.
“We need to start
focusing more on quality and not just quantity
and put more emphasis on not so much what is
done but also how it is done,” Dr Kapila
emphasized.
The HIV Global Alliance
is an enabling framework to mobilize capacities
and resources to provide harmonized, effective
support to national Societies for the achievement
of their HIV programmes within the framework
of the Federation’s Global Agenda.
The Alliance also includes
parts of Asia and Africa which have been selected
by the International Federation as other priority
regions for the implementation of the programme.
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