The 5th HIV Competencies Workshop, in Mexico City from 29 July – 1 August, brought together our focus Member Associations with Regional and Central Office staff to build collective HIV competency through sharing experiences and best practice.
The theme of the workshop ‘Evidence for linking HIV and SRH: Action and Answers’, focused on how to use the evidence base to inform future HIV programmes and projects, ensuring that IPPF remains at the forefront of effective SRH and HIV integration.
As in previous years, the four day workshop devoted one day to each area of the IPPF HIV strategy ‘Community Links’:
During the workshop there were guest speakers and sessions to strengthen competencies on a variety of technical issues such as positive prevention, criminalization of onward transmission, preventing mother-to-child transmission, and Hepatitis and HIV co-infection.
The workshop also provided an opportunity for each Member Association to take part in a discussion and share their successes and challenges, as well as the opportunity to look ahead and develop action plans for the coming year.
The workshop evaluation forms elicited the following feedback from participants:
• “As the group gets older and more knowledgeable about HIV, there are more opportunities to share experiences among the participants, and you can get ideas for programmes or models which may work well in your own country.” (Esperanza Delgado, MEXFAM, Mexico)
• “In a fast-paced development arena, where concepts, approaches, and terminology are increasingly nuanced, the workshop provided a platform for sharing and debate.” (Kabir Singh, SARO)
• “We updated and fine tuned the knowledge we had on various topics like criminalization, positive prevention and existing strategic partnerships with other networks and organizations.” (Hugues Lago, ARO)
• “This year I will focus more on vulnerable groups such as sex workers, people living with HIV and men who have sex with men. I have benefited from the experiences of other Member Associations, learning from constraints and difficulties they faced and how they solved them.” (Nagat Elhadi, SFPA, Sudan)
• “It is a very innovative programme.” (Lena Luyckfasseel, EN)
Workshop presentations HIV updates 2007/8
1. Central Office update
2. ARO update
3. AWR update
4. EN update
5. ESEAOR update
6. SARO update
7. WHR update
8. 2008 HIV global indicators
Prevention
1. Prevention roundtable – Cameroon
2. Preventing mother-to-child transmission
Treatment, care and support
1. Treatment roundtable – Sudan
2. Hepatitis and HIV co-infection
Stigma and discrimination
1. Stigma roundtable – India
2. Does HIV look like me?
3. Men and boys
Linking Sexual and Reproductive Health and HIV
1. Collecting the evidence (Gates)
2. Cost study on integrated services (LSHTM)
3. Cochrane Systematic Review findings
4. Linkages roundtable - Russia
The next Competencies Workshop will be held in India in July 2009.