PAHO working with health sector to develop new National HIV Strategic Plan

By BBN Staff: The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said this week that it has been working closely with the Ministry of Health (MOH) and other health sector partners to assist Belize in developing a new HIV National Strategic Plan (NSP) because the current plan is coming to an end soon.

In a release issued yesterday, the PAHO said that a meeting was held with the National AIDS Commission (NAC), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), civil society organizations and other national stakeholders on Thursday, November 14, which was geared towards evaluating and conduction a situational analysis to support the development of the new NSP.

“The NSP has been the guiding document in providing the right course aimed at advancing towards ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030. Thus, the evaluation, funded by the Global Fund, not only looked at the implementations of the plan but at the broader context of what is happening in Belize politically, economically, socially and culturally,” the PAHO said.

PAHO added that it held consultations with the various stakeholders to obtain clarification and information critical to the development of the situational analysis including consultations with the MOH, NAC, BFLA, men who have sex with men (MSM), youth services, and people living with HIV.

Dr. Sarah Insanally, PAHO consultant who facilitated the meeting, said that her role in the process is to listen to the concerns being raised from all stakeholders and provide feedback as the various discussed topics such as prevention, testing, treatment and care, health system capacity, and governance and coordination of the national HIV response including the current plan’s progress and achievements, challenges and barriers, priority gaps and effectiveness of interventions for each area.

“What’s important for me, not necessarily is you have 100 people in the room, but you have the right people in the room,” said Insanally. “The value of something like this is it brings all the diverse representatives of the stakeholders together and it’s an opportunity to have a dialogue,” she said.

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