In Central America, Health Workers and Communities Achieve Big Progress in the Fight against HIV

Health workers in the HIV clinic at Juan Jos é Ortega National Hospital in Coatepeque, Guatemala. Photos by Anna Watts for IntraHealth InternationalFebruary 07, 2018IntraHealth International is in the final months of an intensive two-and-a-half-year collaboration with government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and civil society groups in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Panama to accelerate progress toward reaching theUNAIDS Fast-Track targets and ending the AIDS epidemic —and the results from the first two years are striking. IntraHealth’s local partners administered 186,471 HIV tests, reached 35,599 people living with HIV with critical care and treatment, and drastically improved client adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART) through our USAID Central America Capacity Plus (CAMPLUS) Project.Central America ’s epidemic is currently concentrated in key populations, such as men who have sex with men, transgender women, and sex workers. Stigma and discrimination, limited access to health care, and migration, all make the region vulnerable to a growing epidemic that could threaten the region’s signific ant progress toward achieving the UNAIDS 90-90-90 goals (90% of HIV-positive people knowing their status, 90% of people diagnosed with HIV on ART, and 90% of clients on ART achieving viral load suppression by 2020).Partnering with health workers and communities and giving them the tools to identify and address problems they ’re best positioned to solve i...

Source: IntraHealth International - February 7, 2018 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: intrahealth Source Type: news