National Aids Council addresses concerns and needs
The National Aids Council delegation during their meeting with President Faure (Photo: Jude Morel)

The National Aids Council met President Danny Faure yesterday at State House to inform him of the council’s work and provide further information on the status of HIV/Aids in the country at present.

It was also an opportunity for the council to voice out its main concerns and its needs in order to provide better and effective response to HIV/Aids.

The council’s delegation was led by its chairperson Peggy Vidot.

Also present at the meeting were the secretary of state for health, Ambassador Marie-Pierre Lloyd, principal secretary for health Dr Bernard Valentin and public health commissioner Dr Jude Gedeon.

“Our needs are many; the council itself is small in terms of being able to respond effectively to everything that needs to be done. We have a coordinating role which is set down in the law. But coordinating means being able to reach everyone, every sector, and every group which is working on HIV/Aids and knowing what they are doing, how to better assist them and pulling people together,” Mrs Vidot said following the meeting.

“This most definitely requires more people and more funds,” she added.

Mrs Vidot noted that the National Aids Council also lacks the necessary information on how the epidemic is currently evolving in different groups in the society.

She acknowledged that there are presently numerous groups, at different levels of risk, which needs their own individual targeted approach.

Examples of these groups are heroin users, mothers who are heroin users and same-sex partners, who cannot be approached in the same way in regards to the prevention of HIV/Aids because their specificities and challenges are not the same.

“We need more information, more knowledge on who these groups are, where they are, how we can reach them and the best strategies we should put in place,” Mrs Vidot highlighted.

The council is working towards achieving the 90-90-90 goal, an ambitious UNAids treatment target which hopes that, by 2020, 90% of all people living with HIV should know their HIV status, 90% of all people with diagnosed HIV infection should receive sustained antiretroviral therapy and 90% of all people receiving antiretroviral therapy should have viral suppression.

Elsie Pointe