Highlighting Men's Health: A Pancap Initiative For Ending the Aids Epidemic

Global Frontier this week highlights a Share Fair on Men’s Health, an initiative by the Caribbean Community's Pan Caribbean Partnerships Against HIV/AIDS (PANCAP) held on March 14, 2019 in Trinidad and Tobago.  It is an illustration of a prototype through an interactive methodology and active participation of practitioners. It  addresses the critical issues of men’s health with a focus on accelerating prevention to achieve the UNAIDS’ 90-90-90 Targets, a scientific approach to ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030.  The main features are: How to get 90% of men with HIV knowing their status? How to get 90% of those knowing their status on treatment?  How to get 90% of those on treatment with viral loads in the blood low enough as not to transmit HIV. 
 
The Share Fair​, ​a component of The PANCAP Knowledge for Health Project​, is ​funded by PEPFAR-USAID and implemented by the Center for Communication Programs, John Hopkins University.  It included a ‘knowledge cafe’  highlighting successful men’s health programmes.  In so doing, it provided a space for National AIDS Programme  managers, health professionals and representatives of  Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in the Caribbean,  to showcase best practices, discuss critical challenges, and provide recommendations for increasing access to services for men, including men who have sex with men and other key populations in achieving 90-90-90.  
 
The Share Fair was a response to  the UNAIDS Global AIDS Update 2018 showing  that gay men and other men who have sex with men accounted for nearly a quarter of new infections in 2017.  The report also highlighted that efforts to reach men and boys, and particularly gay men and other men who have sex with men, are constrained by health services insufficiently tailored to their needs and limited community-based services.
Dr Shanti Singh-Anthony, Coordinator of the PANCAP Knowledge for Health Project hailed the activity as a success. She said it highlighted “ innovations from country programmes that have achieved positive results in relation to increasing access to prevention, treatment, care and support services for men and boys. Implementers of programmes who are challenged to reach men with health services can use the innovative practices to increase men’s access to quality health services.” 
 
​The link to the event  taken from the  PANCAP.org website​​ is: https://spark.adobe.com/page/iuc4XSGTBTrG1/
 
See the National AIDS Programme coordinators, health professionals and representatives of civil society in the Caribbean at work.  Engage in a dialogue with PANCAP’s Knowledge for Health Programme. Share your experiences. Make a difference to the challenge of ending the AIDS epidemic. 

​Eddie Greene

---