[afro-nets] Public-Private Partnerships for Community-Based Sustainable HIV/AIDS Advocacy (2)

["Dr. Uzodinma A. adirieje" <afrepton@yahoo.com>]

Public-Private Partnerships for Community-Based Sustainable HIV/AIDS Advocacy (2)
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by Dr. Uzodinma A. Adirieje, Nigeria

Community-based PPPs should advocate for HIV/AIDS control programmes and activities that reach organizations within their communities, and for the provision of HIV/AIDS-related services to clients and educational institutions, businesses, churches, etc (including non-members of the partnership). These groups could benefit from advocacy tailored at providing and accessing foods and nutrition to AIDS orphans, the elderly and persons on home-based care and or treatment. They could also benefit from advocacy meant to establish thriving ?ten-to-teens? peer education groups, producing monthly/periodic newsletters, organizing small focus groups to discuss HIV/AIDS in the community, providing help with housing and emergency financial and healthcare needs, transportation, VCT, nutrition counseling, referrals, etc.

For Nigeria and other ?undeveloped, non-developing or developing (?)? countries, the infectious disease burden due to HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria is enormous. Although the three diseases are being given a global onslaught through the Global Fund and several other similar initiatives, each of them is basically different in terms of the impact of its burden and local coping capacity within different communities. In some communities, products and services needed to control one or more of the diseases are available and accessible/affordable.  In others, available products and or services are bedevilled by poor access and or lack of affordability, while some others are beset with problems of acquired drug resistance mainly due to improper usage.  

The PPP might wish to address these issues through collaboration with any research and or development effort that is underway within the community (e.g. by a pharmaceutical or marketing firm), or initiate one and invite its members to buy into it. It is essential that the partnership realises that this would require some level of scientific knowledge which is most likely available within the PPP, or can be identified and brought into it. One of the poorly-emphasised advantages of the PPP is its freedom and capacity to enlarge and co-opt required ?power bases? into its fold and activities, at any time. The leadership of the PPP has the duty to discover such ?power bases? and decide when to bring them in. 

WHY THE PPP?S HIV/AIDS ADVOCACY AT COMMUNITY LEVELS

Although other approaches might be available ? and indeed might have been used ? to pursue HIV/AIDS advocacy nationally and internationally, there still remains an acute dearth of visible concerted effort at the community levels. PPP-championed community level advocacy for HIV and Aids prevention, care and treatment recommends itself for the following possible reasons:

a)	It would prevent or mitigate an AIDS epidemic among targeted and participating communities
b)	It could be one of the key elements in achieving high coverage and sustainability as it is an activity from and for within
c)	HIV/AIDS advocacy has a greater tendency of becoming part of the community?s culture as the PPP is passed on from generation to generation, thus assuring its own sustainability
d)	It links experienced and emerging leaders within and across HIV/AIDS-affected communities, sectors and issues
e)	It emphasizes the importance of the health needs and rights of all members ? indigenes and migrants alike - and supports them to access available HIV and AIDS products and services
f)	It is capable of utilizing available knowledge and instruments of HIV and Aids prevention, care and treatment to bring the epidemic under control
g)	Its participatory nature encourages ?patient self-advocacy? i.e. involvement of PLWAs, PABAs, widows, orphans and vulnerable children in decisions and actions on HIV/AIDS within the community, either directly or through equally affected representatives
h)	It helps the community to organize and ensure that the voices of people living with HIV/AIDS and their loved ones are directly heard by elected officials and administrators of government programs - who are also part of the PPP; thus short-cutting over-bearing bureaucracies and attracting government?s ?quick action?
i)	Its all-embracing nature puts the PPP in a best position to define mortality/morbidity, trends and costs, accessible to treatment, care and support, availability and suitability of non-drug interventions, limitations of existing products and services, alternative potential interventions, possible scientific challenges, extent of current industry engagement, etc within the context of the community
j)	By its nature too, the PPP has the capacity to employ private-sector approaches to support HIV/AIDS research and confront drugs and vaccines development challenges
k)	Because the PPP?s primary motive is public health rather than commerce, it is capable of monitoring the implementation of approved and existing government?s policy for the control of the pandemic, as well as providing more sincere evaluation of the same

DECIDING ON PPP?S OBJECTIVES FOR THE HIV/AIDS ADVOCACY

Depending on the peculiarities of each community, the system objectives of a typical PPP for sustainable community-based HIV/AIDS advocacy may include any of ? but is not restricted to ? the following:

i.	To increase the participation of people living with HIV, their families, communities and organizations in non-partisan HIV and Aids control activities
ii.	To link local HIV/AIDS activists to State, national and global campaigns for effective HIV prevention, care and universal access to quality treatment
iii.	To build HIV and Aids outreach and service into community activism
iv.	To help workers and all persons affected by HIV and Aids to find a voice in the larger systems
v.	To encourage the utilization of the ?Doha Agreement?, for local production and effective roll-out of inexpensive generic medicines for HIV diseases and associated opportunistic infections
vi.	To improve the capacity of its members to monitor stakeholders? delivery on various commitments and advocate effectively for improvement in HIV and Aids control through necessary sectoral reforms [?. To be continued]

REFERENCES

See first article


Dr. Uzodinma A. Adirieje
mailto:afrepton@yahoo.com