On 16 August, the Board of The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria approved a USD$6.5 Million Multi-country Caribbean grant for PANCAP-CVC-COIN.  The CARICOM Secretariat will serve as the Principal Recipient while PANCAP, CVC and COIN will serve as Sub-Recipients. The Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA),  the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the Cuban National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX) are Sub-sub-recipients.

The grant, titled “Sustainability of services for key populations in the Caribbean” will commence on 1 October 2019 and will end on 30 September 2022.  Men who have sex with men (MSM), Sex workers and Transgender people are direct beneficiaries of the grant which will be shared by ten counties, namely Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Suriname and the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.

The Goal of the grant is to Provide Sustainable Prevention, Treatment and Care Services for Key Populations in the Caribbean Region.

Four strategies will be pursued to achieve the goal of the grant. These are:

• Increase domestic resources for effective key population programming
• Mobilise resources for key population organisations
• Reduce structural barriers to key population services including stigma and discrimination and gender-based violence
• Improve knowledge generation and use of strategic information on key populations for decision-making and advocacy by communities and other stakeholders.

The key activities are geared toward programmes to reduce human rights-related barriers to HIV services – HIV and HIV/TB related legal services; and community responses and systems, institutional capacity building, planning and leadership development.

The Global Fund deemed the overall programme to be technically sound and strategically focused as it demonstrates added value from a multi-country approach, compared to a country-specific approach, leveraging existing regional partnerships and structures.