The island of Hispaniola belongs to the region with the second highest adult HIV prevalence in the world.  According to UNAIDS 2010 Global Report, higher prevalence rates are found only in sub-Saharan Africa. This alarming issue has urged MOSCTHA and other HIV stakeholders from the Caribbean to gather and work together at the 2011 Caribbean HIV Conference: Strengthening Evidence To Achieve Sustainable Action. Experts, public officials and HIV community members from across the region will be participating in this multidisciplinary forum, which seeks to forge a wider, more effective response to the epidemic through collaborative approaches.

Over the course of November 18–21, in Nassau, The Bahamas, MOSCTHA USA Director, Edison Suero; Health Programs Directors for MOSCTHA Dominican Republic and MOSCTHA Haiti, Tony Contreras and Doctor Orne Sylvain respectively; as well as health promoters: Maria candida Sepulveda, will hear directly from authorities about the medical, social, and socio-political factors influencing the HIV epidemic. They will also share, and learn from around 2,000 attendees with diverse perspectives and backgrounds. The conference is expected to highlight scientific research findings, implementation lessons learned, skills-building tools, and networking opportunities.

Dr. Perry Gomez, Director of the National AIDS Programme, and Conference co-chair has said that “there has been a lot of progress in the fight against HIV in the Caribbean over the past 10 years, especially in the area of care and treatment, but other recent health challenges, such as other infectious diseases, flu, dengue fever, and, most recently, cholera—along with natural disasters, like hurricanes and earthquakes—have more immediate debilitating impact. In addition, there is increasing concern about noncommunicable diseases. Attention to all these issues has diminished the intensity with which the region has managed its HIV response.”

This year’s theme, Strengthening Evidence To Achieve Sustainable Action, focuses on identifying a viable path that can be maintained in the future regional response to HIV. "In the process of identifying the theme for this Conference, we reviewed the Caribbean's HIV experience over the last three decades or so, and identified two critical and related concepts that we felt should be central to the Conference program -- sustainability and the importance of evidence in guiding the strategies that will attain this goal," said Conference Planning Committee member Roger McLean of the University of the West Indies at St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. "Sustainability is a key challenge facing the regional HIV response, and, to confront it effectively, we need to carefully evaluate what has and hasn't worked well previously, share good practices and lessons learned, and work together in their application through more integrated approaches."

The event is the third Caribbean HIV conference in the past decade, and this year is sponsored by the Government of The Commonwealth of The Bahamas and the University of Puerto Rico, and conference co-chairs are Professor Daisy M. Gely, Medical Sciences Campus, University of Puerto Rico; Dr. Perry Gomez, Director, Bahamian National AIDS Programme, Princess Margaret Hospital; and Dr. Jack Whitescarver, NIH Associate Director for AIDS Research and Director, Office of AIDS Research, National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

If you’d like to learn more about MOSCTHA’s initiatives to fight against HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean, or about other health care services we currently provide, please look through this website or contact us directly at moscthausa@mosctha.org. You can also contribute this holiday season by attending our annual fundraising event on Dec 3rd in NY! This year’s goal is to furnish MOSCTHA’s newly built health clinic “Centre de Sante Integral, La Solidarite” located in Petit-Goave, Haiti.