Caribbean National Societies participating in the first phase of the Global Alliance (GA) on HIV hope to really get started in their work in January 2008.

The HIV Global Alliance is an enabling framework to mobilise capacities and resources to provide harmonised, effective support to National Societies for the achievement of their HIV programmes within the framework of the Federation’s Global Agenda.

The National Societies of Haiti, Jamaica, Guyana and Belize will use the GA approach to scale up their HIV programmes.

Representatives from the four National Societies met for two days for a peer-review meeting in mid-October. John Fleming, Health delegate based in Panama, and Dylis McDonald, HIV officer at the Caribbean Regional Representation Office, Trinidad, coordinated the meeting.

The meeting allowed National Societies to present their individual plans, followed by a period of feedback from the other National Societies.

Four key areas were identified during the meeting: the need for rapid testing; the need to do more work with society’s vulnerable groups like sex workers and men who have sex with men (MSM); the scaling up of the regional peer education programme “Together We Can” (TWC), with a focus on non-attached youth; and improve governance and overall management of the National Societies, as well as strengthen its branches.