Archives: Media Releases

PANCAP joins the Region in mourning the loss of HIV and public health adviser to the Caribbean, Dr. Michel de Groulard. Michel had more than 30 years of experience in International Public Health, with around 25 years dedicated to HIV.

Michel was a French citizen who made the Caribbean his home. He lived in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago for several years until his passing.

A medical doctor by training, Michel worked on several public health projects for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and provided healthcare to remote desert villages in Mauritania and Cameroon. He also served as a Public Health Officer in the Grenada Health Ministry and an HIV Project Manager at the Caribbean Epidemiology Centre.

Michel joined UNAIDS in 2001 as a Senior Partnerships Adviser. He went on to serve the Caribbean region in several positions with UNAIDS, including Senior Program Adviser to the region for more than seven years. Last month, he concluded a two-year appointment as interim Country Director for the Guyana/Suriname office which he opened in Georgetown in 2005.

In his HIV work over the years, he continuously emphasised the role of civil society at all levels of the response to address risk and vulnerability, gender issues and barriers to access services. Michel provided technical support for creating the Caribbean Network of People living with HIV in 1996 and establishing the Caribbean Vulnerable Communities Coalition in 2005. For several years he was Vice Chair of Community Actions Resource, Trinidad and Tobago’s oldest organization serving people living with HIV.

Above all Michel was a champion for the marginalized and excluded, especially people living with HIV and key populations. He ensured that communities’ concerns and voices were put at the centre of planning and advocacy. He is remembered by civil society for championing their critical importance in shaping public policy and delivering services.

Michel never truly retired. Always energetic and committed, he took on several challenges following his initial departure from UNAIDS in 2013. This included the role of Regional Manager for the USAID/PEPFAR LINKAGES programme for the Eastern and Southern Caribbean. He also volunteered with the Alliance Française in Port-of-Spain.

His interests in epidemiology and public health were enduring. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, he compiled and disseminated daily country and regional graphs tracking new infections and deaths in the Caribbean. His nightly WhatsApp messages to friends and colleagues continued until the night before his passing.

We extend our deepest condolences to his family, colleagues and friends.  The Region has lost a dedicated champion for vulnerable populations.

The inequalities perpetuating the AIDS pandemic are not inevitable; we can tackle them. This World AIDS Day, 1 December, UNAIDS urges each of us to address the inequalities holding back progress in ending AIDS.

The “Equalize” slogan is a call to action. It prompts all of us to work for the proven practical actions needed to address inequalities and help end AIDS. These include:

• Increase availability, quality and suitability of services for HIV treatment, testing and prevention so that everyone is well-served.
• Reform laws, policies and practices to tackle the stigma and exclusion faced by people living with HIV and by key and marginalised populations so that everyone is shown respect and welcomed.
• Ensure the sharing of technology enables equal access to the best HIV science between communities and the Global South and North.
• Communities will be able to use and adapt the “Equalize” message to highlight the particular inequalities they face and to press for the actions needed to address them.
• Data from UNAIDS on the global HIV response reveals that during the last two years of COVID-19 and other global crises, progress against the HIV pandemic has faltered, resources have shrunk, and millions of lives are at risk as a result.

Four decades into the HIV response, inequalities persist for the most basic services like testing, treatment, and condoms, and even more so for new technologies.

Young women in Africa remain disproportionately affected by HIV, while coverage of dedicated programmes for them remains too low. In 19 high-burden countries in Africa, dedicated combination prevention programmes for adolescent girls and young women are operating in only 40% of the high HIV incidence locations.

Only a third of people in key populations— including gay men and other men who have sex with men, transgender people, people who use drugs, sex workers, and prisoners—have regular prevention access. Key populations face major legal barriers, including criminalisation, discrimination and stigma.

We have only eight years left before the 2030 goal of ending AIDS as a global health threat. Economic, social, cultural and legal inequalities must be addressed as a matter of urgency. In a pandemic, inequalities exacerbate the dangers for everyone. Indeed, the end of AIDS can only be achieved if we tackle the inequalities which drive it. World leaders need to act with bold and accountable leadership. And all of us, everywhere, must do all we can to help tackle inequalities too.

Activities will build up to World AIDS Day in November. The World AIDS Day report will be released in late November.

On World AIDS Day (1 December) events will take place worldwide. These activities will be led not only by official bodies but also, most importantly, by communities. Through photos and videos shared by groups on social media and aggregated by UNAIDS, people can have a sense of the kaleidoscope of events taking place and be inspired by determination and hope.

“We can end AIDS – if we end the inequalities perpetuating it. This World AIDS Day, we need everyone to get involved in sharing the message that we will all benefit when we tackle inequalities,” says UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima. “To keep everyone safe, to protect everyone’s health, we need to Equalize.”

Adaptable materials for World AIDS Day will be shared on the UNAIDS special World AIDS Day page beginning in October.

The Global AIDS Update 2022, released in July, shows that during the last two years of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and other global crises, progress against the HIV pandemic has faltered, resources have shrunk, and millions of lives are at risk.

The report titled “In Danger” was launched ahead of the International AIDS Conference in Montreal, Canada.

On average, the AIDS pandemic took a life every minute in 2021. There were 650 000 AIDS-related deaths last year despite the availability of effective HIV treatment and tools to prevent, detect, and treat opportunistic infections.

The Caribbean 

Regarding the Caribbean, there were an estimated 330 000 people living with HIV last year. According to the report, from 2010 to 2021, AIDS-related deaths in the Region declined by 50 percent.

There were 5700 deaths last year, and new HIV infections decreased by 28 percent since 2010. An estimated 14 000 people contracted HIV during 2021, translating into 270 new HIV infections every week in the Caribbean.

“While the Caribbean has not had the increase in new infections experienced in other regions, the rate of decline is far too slow,” explained Luisa Cabal, UNAIDS Director of the Latin America and Caribbean Regional Support Team.

“Thousands of avoidable HIV infections every year are making it ever harder and more expensive to ensure People Living with HIV have access to lifesaving treatment and that the targets to end the AIDS pandemic by 2030 are reached,” Cabal added.

The report recommends that countries in the Region urgently prioritize combination HIV prevention. This includes behavioural interventions like comprehensive sexuality education as well as moving to large-scale implementation of prevention projects reaching vulnerable populations at elevated risk of HIV so that innovations such as HIV self-testing and pre-exposure prophylaxis or PrEP become more widely available.

PrEP is daily medicine taken by an HIV-negative person who is at substantial risk to prevent contracting the virus (View the PANCAP PrEP Knowledge Suite).

The data indicated that these prevention strategies are especially important for vulnerable groups like adolescent girls and young women as well as key populations such as gay men and other men who have sex with men, sex workers, transgender people and people who use drugs.

One-third or 34 percent of new HIV infections last year were among Caribbean young people aged 15 – 24. There were twice as many infections among young women (23 percent) as compared to their male peers (11 percent).

The report notes that during the disruptions of the last few years, key populations in the Region have been particularly affected.

As of the end of 2021, an estimated 84 percent of People Living with HIV in the Caribbean were aware of their status. Eighty-three percent of all diagnosed people were on treatment. Of these, 87 percent were virally suppressed last year. The target for 2025 is 95 percent for each of these result areas.

At present, the Caribbean is below the global averages for both HIV treatment coverage and viral suppression.

The report recommends that Caribbean countries implement policies that remove structural barriers to HIV services and repeal laws and policies that criminalize people living with and at risk of HIV.

Finally, deliberate action is required to ensure sufficient and sustainable funding for the Caribbean HIV response.

Image: Ms Luisa Cabal, UNAIDS Director Latin America and Caribbean Regional Support Team

The PANCAP Coordinating Unit and the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) have developed a Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) knowledge suite available on the PANCAP website.  The suite comprises digital posters for Social Media, Information, Education and Communication (IEC) materials, including digital brochures, clinical guidelines for PrEP and nPeP, PrEP registry, monitoring tools and capacity-building materials, including training videos.

The resource was developed to support countries in setting up services for PrEP and nPeP with emphasis on key populations.  The package will allow for the standardisation of the services in the Region and data collection to support region-wide analysis for evidence-based decision-making.

Mr Timothy Austin, Senior Project Officer, Communications, PANCAP Coordinating Unit, explained that the IEC materials were developed based on input and feedback from a virtual focus group earlier this year.  The focus group consisted of civil society representatives, key populations, technical staff from the National AIDS Programme Secretariat in Guyana, and technical staff from PANCAP and PAHO.  He highlighted that the social media visuals and digital brochures contain essential PrEP information and detailed explanations on who should use PrEP, its effectiveness and its side effects.

Ms Sandra Jones, Advisor, HIV/STI, TB & Viral Hepatitis, PAHO/WHO – Subregional Program Coordination, Caribbean, emphasised that NAPS and CSOs can utilise the IEC materials to create demand for PrEP.  She explained that the clinical guidelines and other tools would support the delivery of a comprehensive package of services that will facilitate a combination approach to HIV prevention.

Technical guidelines available in the suite also offer comprehensive information on procedures for initiating PrEP (first visit), a checklist for counselling clients and a list of medications that interact with PrEP, among others.

The PrEP Suite forms part of the initiatives under the current Global Fund project, with the technical guidance and support of PAHO.  The overarching goal is to provide the necessary guidance and tools to support countries establishing and strengthening services for key populations.

PANCAP, with technical support from the Jamaica AIDS Support for Life (JASL), will facilitate a “Training of Trainers on the use of Oral Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) for the prevention of HIV, 16 – 18 August 2022 in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.

The capacity-building activity is designed for health care providers working at the community and facility level to equip them with knowledge about PrEP as an additional tool for prevention.  The course will sharpen their skills in negotiating tailored prevention plans for their respective beneficiaries.

In addition, the training activity will provide basic PrEP information and employ participatory activities to allow participants to effectively promote/support PrEP as another prevention strategy for some of their clients.  For medical practitioners, the training will provide guidance on how to administer, monitor and manage PrEP.

The training is supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and facilitated by JASL trainers with capacities across clinical aspects of PrEP services and administration, understanding referrals and linkages approach to PrEP, communication, messaging, monitoring and evaluation.

The capacity building is happening several weeks after the launch of the PANCAP PrEP Knowledge Suite, developed with technical support from PAHO for use by National AIDS Programmes, civil society organisations, and other stakeholders involved in HIV programme implementation for capacity building and community health promotion activities on PrEP.