PRESS RELEASE
Bucharest, 06 November 2016
The European AIDS Treatment Group (EATG –www.eatg.org) has chosen the Romanian capital Bucharest as place for its autumn 2016 Policy Meeting. The entire region of Central and Eastern Europe, and Central Asia face particular problems that require specific responses form the communities of people living with HIV.
By holding our meeting in Bucharest and inviting Romanian organisations we want to underline our commitment to people living with HIV and at risk of HIV infections in the region. We also want to highlight the need to ensure that the AIDS response – in terms of both prevention and treatment – is fully funded, because without that we can only expect to see an increase in even more costly new infections.
“By holding our meeting in Bucharest and inviting Romanian organisations we want to underline our commitment for people living with HIV and at risk for HIV infections in the region”, points out Teixeira. Low testing rates, linkage to care and issues with access to medicine all pose particular challenges when considering the achievement of the 90-90-90 target set by UNAIDS1.
With more than 20 HIV experts from all over Europe, EATG brings a task force of advocates to Bucharest. Their main concern remains sustainable funding. EATG wants the area to ensure that the goals defined by UNAIDS are feasible.
“We are facing huge challenges for example with adherence and retention in care, even though there are several good and strong NGOs working in the field”, confirm Bogdan Hadarag, representative of UNOPA2, a Romanian national umbrella for HIV/AIDS organisations and Ioan Petre from the local harm reduction organisation Carusel3. While prevention tools like PrEP are very important, the situation is much more complex and nuanced across the region, especially when it comes to access to medicines and occasional stock-out and shortages.
For some countries in the region, HIV related funding used to be provided by a multi-national entity called the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GF)4. But with GF’s financial restrictions and withdrawal from several countries, governments now need to commit their national policies to ensure affordable medicines for their citizens living with HIV and coinfections.
Through treatment activism, policy advocacy and scientifically based training programs, the EATG has been in the forefront of helping people living with, affected by and at risk from HIV in WHO Europe for 25 years.
1 http://www.unaids.org/en/resources/documents/2014/90-90-90
2 http://unopa.ro/
3 http://carusel.org/home
4 http://www.theglobalfund.org/en/
