3 Ways to End the Global HIV Epidemic —Locally

November 29, 2018It won ’t happen from an office or a conference room. It’ll happen on the front lines.If ever there was a day we wish didn ’t need commemorating, it’s World AIDS Day.We wish the virus had never made the jump from chimps to humans, morphing from simian immunodeficiency virus to HIV and altering the course of history in the process. We wish it hadn ’t orphaned countless children or infected them before they were even born. We wish it had never killed 39 million people and that there was no reason at all to mark December 1 this way, as we have for the past 30 years.Fortunately, we ’ve come a long way since 1988. And we’ve learned a few things about what it will take to end the AIDS epidemic once and for all.Health workers are the front line of defense.We know it won ’t happen from an office or a gleaming conference room. It will have to happen locally—in the big cities and small towns and hard-to-reach villages around the world that are the front lines of the disease.Here are three ways we in the global health community can work locally to help countries build the skills, systems, and self-reliance that will finally put the epidemic to bed.1. Make the health workforce a priority.Health workers are the front line of defense against new infections and treatment for those who need it.These are doctors, lab techs, pharmacists. They ’re nurses likeOlivia Nandy in Namibia, who have the power to put clients at ease and coax them back to the clinic s...
Source: IntraHealth International - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Source Type: news