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Coordinated action for HIV/AIDS National Strategy
Take the lead, stop AIDS
Toni Dimkov
The usual practice of distribution of condoms and educational activities has this year been risen on a higher level with a series of events which find their reflection in significantly raising public awareness towards this issue. Under the motto “Stop AIDS – keep the promise – take the lead”, the civil society organization H.E.R.A. started marking the “Fight against AIDS Month”, with three billboards on which the global message has been written of the world campaign for marking 1 December, World AIDS Day.
“The main goal of the campaign is not isolating the problem, but integration of HIV/AIDS within programs for sexual and reproductive health and raising public awareness of the issue”, pointed out Drasko Kostovski, project manager in H.E.R.A.
In terms of the new department at the Clinic for Infectious Diseases in Skopje, Milena Stevanovic, national HIV/AIDS coordinator, says: “There has been an HIV/AIDS ward at the Clinic for Infectious Diseases so far, but it was two rooms within other ward, and there was a need for a separate ward in which, except for treatment and care, there will also be education and prevention and everything related to treatment of HIV/AIDS patients. Now at the Clinic for Infectious Diseases there are ten beds within the ward. The need was obvious and with help from the Global Fund, which provided the funds and the Ministry of Health on the other hand, conditions were made for a ward equipped according to world standards”.
At the round table held on 14 December, the presence of a few members of the parliament of the Republic of Macedonia was an opportunity to present the actual condition in this issue by the state institutions and civil society organizations. Snezana Cicevalieva from the Ministry of Health pointed out that “the basic mission of the Ministry of Health concerning fight against HIV/AIDS is to work in direction of HIV/AIDS control, against discrimination and stigmatization of persons having this disease, with focus on protection and realization of human rights”. The key year for starting an organized response to issues related to HIV/AIDS was 2001, when the Republic of Macedonia adopted the UN Declaration of Commitment. The first strategy for HIV/AIDS control in Macedonia was created in 2003 and it was successfully completed in the course of that year. It is significant that within the first strategy for HIV/AIDS control, from an aspect of coordinated response, a unique strategy was built for the first time, a unique coordination body was formed and a unique national system for monitoring and evaluation of activities. The Ministry of Health was involved in the realization of the strategy and the non-governmental sector which had 51 percent of the grant received on the basis of the strategy. A total of 40 participants from different fields were involved in the coordinated response to issues related to HIV/AIDS.
The second national HIV/AIDS strategy, which covers the period from 2008 to 2013, is the basis for receiving the new grant from the Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, in the amount of $10 million.
“Thanks to the Global Fund, activities are realized for HIV/AIDS prevention. Unlike $10 million from the Global Fund, on a national level, from the budget of RM for this field for 2008, 8.2 million denars have been given, or about 120 thousand EURO. In the national program performers of the activities are the ten Health Protection Bureaus, Republic Health Bureau, Clinic for Infectious Diseases, Laboratory for Clinical Biochemistry and the Institute for Epidemiology”, explained Jovanka Kostovska, manager of the prevention sector at the Ministry of Health.
The concrete data about the condition in this field were presented by Milena Stevanovic, national HIV/AIDS Coordinator. “On a global level, 33 million people live with HIV/AIDS, out of which 2.5 million are children under the age of 15. Figures in Macedonia are the following: 102 cases have been registered since the first, in 1997 until now where 76 patients belong to the AIDS phase, and 26 are HIV positive patients”, pointed out Stevanovic. According to the figures, our country is within the countries with a low prevalence of HIV/AIDS and the main objective of the HIV/AIDS National Strategy is to keep the low prevalence by putting accent to prevention activities directed mostly towards risk groups, such as people who inject drugs, sexual workers, men who have sex with men and convicts.
“Civil society organizations are always directed towards target groups, that is beneficiaries”, says Drasko Kostovski, project manager in H.E.R.A – Health Education and Research Association, adding: “The way of conveying information is efficient, organizations are mobile and have inventive methods in the approach towards the problem. A few analyses have shown that costs for this way of taking actions by civil society organizations are smaller than during state organizing. Cooperation regarding HIV/AIDS between the non-governmental sector and state institutions is a state model of how civic sector and state institutions should function”.
He pointed out the organizations that deal with this issue and being supported by the Global Fund. They are HOPS, “Doverba”, MIA, EGAL and H.E.R.A.
The civil society organization HOPS – Healthy Options Project Skopje was formed in 1997 and works with drug users and their families and sexual workers, their clients and their families. It has a network of its representatives throughout the country with centers in Skopje, Kumanovo, Gostivar, Stip, Ohrid and Kavadarci and it is a member of HIV/AIDS forum within Brussels European Commission. “Doverba” is an organization formed by the beneficiaries themselves and they work with people who use drugs and psychoactive substances, patients, their partners and their families. The civil society organization MIA works with adolescents, women, Roma, people with risky sexual orientation, sellers of sexual services, people with HIV/AIDS and their families. Their strategic goals are promotion of informative programs for HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases, strengthening personal capabilities during protection against diseases and raising public awareness of HIV/AIDS. The non-governmental organization EGAL is an organization for equality of homosexuals and lesbians, population whose target group are men having sex with men, lesbians, bisexuals and transsexuals. Strategic goals are raising the culture of general population with accent on sexual culture, that is sexual and reproductive health. So far they have formed a national “gay-lesbian” center and two centers, in the central area of Skopje and the municipality of Suto Orizari. They have had about 1.000 clients in the services since 2004. In the course of 2007 they tested about 270 clients for HIV/AIDS.
In H.E.R.A. they work with adolescents and young people on raising sexual and reproductive health in terms of strengthening education and intervention, as well as improvement of quality, care and treatment of people living with HIV/AIDS. They fight for better approach to services which are voluntary, confidential and anonymous. As regular activities, they have education for public relations which in 2007 involved 7.000 young people; they formed two youth centers for sexual and reproductive health and by June 2007 about 6.500 passed through it. They proudly point out the HIV/AIDS counseling service at the Clinic for Infectious Diseases and febrile conditions. This year H.E.R.A has started field counseling and HIV/AIDS testing with about 1.300 clients so far.
Their development in terms of strategic goals strives for representation of clients and lobbying for improvement of their condition in the society. As a result, H.E.R.A. has presented “Guidebook to parliamentarians” and organized a round table whose goal would be creation of parliamentarian lobby-group with an opportunity for active involvement of members of the Macedonian parliament in creating HIV/AIDS policies.
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