Mandeep Dhaliwal, director of HIV and health at the United Nations Development Program (United Nations Development Program).UNDP) is concerned that the dissemination of such laws is hindering the United Nations response to the virus, which is also being affected by a series of interconnected global crises.
Mandeep Dhaliwal: This is an important time and opportunity to encourage those around you to get the AIDS response back on track. For UNDP, the response to HIV/AIDS is all about reducing inequality, improving governance and building resilient and sustainable systems, and this is really where we need to step up if we are to take action. We want to regain our lost position.
United Nations News What is the link between HIV/AIDS and development?
Mandeep Dhaliwal: HIV and other health problems are drivers and indicators of human development. For example, the war in Ukraine is having a significant impact on the cost of living, and 71 million people in the developing world have fallen into poverty in just three months.
That has consequences for everything from funding HIV/AIDS programs, to access to services, prevention and treatment.
We are seeing a rise in inequality within and between countries and we know that, in these types of crises, the impact of the most vulnerable and marginalized in Our community has suffered disproportionately.
We are seeing the cascade effects of many overlapping crises: the COVID pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the financial crisis, the food and energy crisis, and the climate crisis.
All of these are contributing to the fight against HIV and depleting the resources available to countries. There is an incredible strain on already fragile, fragile and often fragmented health systems, and COVID has just deepened that.
There are 100 million people displaced. That’s a global record, and they’re at higher risk of contracting HIV. They face barriers to accessing HIV and health services and are often cut off from support networks.
Economic growth prospects are down. The World Bank predicts that 52 countries will face a significant reduction in their spending capacity through 2026.
These 52 countries are important because they are home to 43% of people living with HIV worldwide. But now the response to HIV, especially in Africa, is in jeopardy.
United Nations News: Do you think we can eradicate AIDS?
Mandeep Dhaliwal: I think we could get to the end of AIDS as a public health threat, but that’s going to require an urgent scale of efforts over the next five years, to really tackle a problem. number of persistent challenges in the response to AIDS, especially for young people and adolescent women in sub-Saharan Africa, and marginalized populations globally.
This includes men who have sex with men, sex workers, transgender people and drug users, who are consistently more vulnerable and at higher risk of contracting HIV.
And that requires removing punitive and discriminatory laws that keep these people away from services and from accessing preventive measures. The data demonstrate that countries that have eliminated these types of laws do better in terms of responding to HIV.
Unfortunately, that is not the norm and most of the countries that have these laws are not geared towards reforming their legal and policy environment.
This conference is therefore also an opportunity to draw attention to the historic objectives adopted by Member States in The 2021 political statement on HIV [these targets involve major reductions in reducing HIV/AIDS related stigma, criminalization, gender inequality and violence]
If we can get there, we could reach the end of AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.
United Nations News: When the theme for this conference – participation and compliance with science – was chosen, was it a message to the governments that had adopted these laws?
Mandeep Dhaliwal: Right. There’s now a lot of science showing that de-anonymization benefits public health and HIV. Prevention is more effective, especially in marginalized populations. It leads to better access to services and social support.
It’s also a message not to forget about HIV. There is still a lot of work to be done and we must regain the foundation that has been lost over the past few years.
© UNICEF / Frank Dejong
A family takes a home HIV screening test in southwestern Côte d’ivoire.
United Nations News: In this very difficult international context, what do you think is the best-case scenario, the actual outcome of this conference?
Mandeep Dhaliwal: One is a commitment to promote action to eliminate sanctions and discriminatory laws, eliminate stigma and discrimination, and protect people from violence.
The other is a commitment to science. Science is evolving at a rate we’ve never seen before. For example, there is now a long-acting antiretroviral drug that would be great for prevention in key populations. But it needs to be priced appropriately and accessible in developing countries.
I hope that the conference solves this problem as it is a theme throughout the COVID pandemic, certainly around COVID vaccination and it is a topic that the HIV community is familiar with, especially when it comes to outreach. treatment.
We’ve been through 40 years of the HIV epidemic and we’re making a lot of progress, but you can’t take it for granted.
We are fully capable of dealing with multiple pandemics at once: HIV, TB, malaria, COVID, and now Monkey smallpoxhas been declared a public health issue of international concern.
We can do it, but it requires investment, action and commitment. We should all be in favor of adequate supplementation Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, will take place at the end of September in New York.
We really must increase our investment, action and commitment to get the job done on HIV because The best way to better prepare for future pandemics is to deal with the ones you already face.
