The International Community of Women Living with HIV (ICWEA) has meaningfully participated in a Ministry of Health, Uganda meeting aimed at draft and developing consolidated HIV guidelines.
The meeting which took place in Entebbe between August 15 -19, 2016 aimed at developing comprehensive guidelines for the management of HIV&AIDS. The Guidelines will be covering all aspects to be considered in HIV management including, HIV testing and counselling, HIV prevention, Elimination of Mother to Child Transmission, differentiated models of service delivery and nutrition among others.
The guidelines are meant for health workers, programmers and other implementers. The development of the guidelines for the country comes at a time when the World Health Organization has released new consolidated guidelines on the use of antiretroviral drugs for treating and preventing HIV infection released in June 2016.
At the meeting ICWEA, made tremendous input and comments regarding the language used in documents. ICWEA called for non-discriminative language, removal of any sections that would fuel criminalization of HIV and inclusion of all key population specifically the LGBTI that the draft guidelines were silent about. ICWEA also advocated for civil society organizations involvement in the final drafting processed as key stakeholders.
Unfortunately, the guidelines were neither clear nor committal on some of the known scientifically proven methods such as – Pre Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) for selected people at substantial risk of acquiring HIV, leaving it for any implementing partner with resources ability and willingness to implement. ICWEA will continue to advocate for equity and fairness.
The Guidelines are in the process of being finalized and the plan is a process that should be completed by October 2016 for a roll out effective January 2017.
ICWEA takes part in developing of consolidated HIV guidelines
