Global Secretariat

From September 23-24, ITPC Secretariat staff attended a strategic planning work session in New York. It was the first time secretariat staff had come together to develop a vision, mission and strategic focus areas for the organisation.

Staff agreed on the vision “A longer, healthier and more productive life for all PLHIV” and a mission “to enable communities in need to access HIV treatment”. The current work of ITPC is divided into four: Advocacy; movement building, knowledge/skills building and partnership with treatment literacy; influencing policy and programs; and evidence collection.

The ITPC Secretariat will continue to consult with Angie Riley on roles and responsibilities and authority with regard to regional networks and regional coordinators and complete the strategic planning process. Regional coordinators will be invited to take part in the consulting diligence process soon.

TMAP: TMAP worked with ITPCru to release a statement during the MDG Summit echoing the voices of Russian activists on issues of ARV stock-outs. Aditi has relocated from Delhi to Pune. MTT9 is underway with team selection and research tool development. It will again focus on prevention of vertical transmission and MTT7 countries have been invited to update their situations since the first publication. TMAP is also recruiting a communication and publications officer.

WorldCAB: Nikos is now working for ITPC full time. WorldCAB is in the process of developing its strategic directions for next year. A proposal is being drafted and going through some revisions. WorldCAB will also revisit its membership criteria and set up a pool of community experts on treatment.

Latin America - Alma de Leon

The CIAT coordinator joined training with key international and regional journalists on media and HIV where she emphasized the role of the media in amplifying the voices of at-risk populations on issues of human rights violations, universal access, stigma and discrimination. The training was held in Atlanta by IMLAS. Alma acknowledged the importance of building relationships with key media for advocacy purposes.

A pre-implementation workshop for fifth-cycle grantees and associates was organised to look at M&E for grants and the issues of pharmacovigilance, drug registration and patents in Latin America, and problems of ARV supply-chain management. CIAT and the key regional activists attending the workshop issued a statement with more than 100 signatories concerned about access to treatment to be presented to international communities and Comité Tecnico de Cooperación Horizontal.

The CIAT coordinador was also a key speaker at the AIDS Symphosium 2010 in Buenos Aires in September, speaking about the role of civil society in scaling up treatment access and education for PLHIV.

In response to the issues of ARV stock-outs in Latin America, CIAT and REDCA organised a press conference in Guatemala to address the problem of ARV procurement with the Pan-American Health Organization. CIAT mobilised support from human rights groups to help monitor the situation regarding access to ARVs.

Eastern Europe and Central Asia - Anastasia Agafonova

ITPCru provided tools to several civil-society groups and networks in Russia to carry out campaigns against ARV drug stock-outs in Kaliningrad, Orenburg, Brjansk and St Petersburg. Rallies, press conferences, flashmobs, street theatres and sign-ons were organised by the local positive groups in respective cities during September and October after the mass demonstration on Red Square and in front of the MoH September 15-16. A statement given by the MoH and Ministry of Social Welfare reads, “In a majority of regions in Russia, no such problem with providing ART to PLHIV exists”. The demands formulated in response to that statement were to preserve contingency funding to cover the drugs supply disruptions, creation of protocols for HIV drugs and their appliance pre-procurement planning, and improve monitoring of the supply-chain management system.

ITPCru conducted a study on procurement of ARV drugs in Russia and found that for 2010, several auctions were conducted in less-than-transparent manners. Out of 39 auctions with pharmaceutical companies for ARVs, 24 were cancelled as there was only one distributor, and therefore drugs were purchased at non-competitively high prices. Several distributors won bids by just 1 kopeek or 1 ruble. The concept note is a useful analytical tool for advocacy. It also lists all the drugs, market prices and distributors.

ITPCru is now convening awards for key activists acknowledging individual/organisational contributions in the AIDS movement. The awardees will be granted a financial contribution from a portion of the Red Ribbon Award premium received by ITPCru in Vienna. Open calls for participating in the voluntary review process are now closed and the panel is ready to look at nominations. Results will be announced prior to World AIDS day.

Meanwhile, ITPCru has been working with Society Association HIV.LV in Latvia to express solidarity to India on FTA negotiations.

Civil-society groups and ITPCru will also publish a regional report on treatment access and organize a Regional Community Advisory Board.

North Africa - Othoman Mellouk

Association de Lutte Contre le sida (ALCS), AMDH, CSAT-MENA and ITPC joined the day of action to voice the concerns to world leaders about the $20-billion support of the Global Fund. The press conference and rally received extensive media coverage. Al Jazeera published the story and interviewed people living with HIV in Morocco, where fear of stigma prevents people from speaking out about HIV status.

According to recent estimates, there are 22,300 HIV-positive people in Morocco with about 3,500 newly diagnosed yearly. HIV is concentrated among sex workers in the region of Souss-Massa Draa and injecting drug users in the northern part of Morocco. Grants from GFATM account for 31% of expenditure on HIV prevention, treatment and care in Morocco.

South Asia - Loon Gangte

Understanding that Europe's attack on generics is not limited to FTA negotiations with India and that the impact could affect access to life-saving medicine globally, 240 organisations across the world showed their solidarity by writing to the Indian prime minister about concerns over European FTA negotiations. On October 6th, DNP+ held a mass “die in” in front of Ministry of Commerce to protest against the inclusion of IP provisions in the EU-India FTA. The rally of about 100 people ran with slogans like “EU India FTA murdabad”. Delhi police charged HIV+ people and detained five protesters, a few of whom were beaten. Detainees were released thanks to the support and intervention of the Lawyers Collective and parliamentarians.

The EU is pursuing FTAs with similar provisions on IP with Brazil, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and South Africa. Europe is participating in negotiations for the conclusion of the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) between developed country governments.

West Africa - Sylvere Bukiki

WATAG hosted the third meeting of the West Africa Regional Advisor Committee in October in Ghana in which the Regional Advisory Committee decided the regional funding priorities for the sixth grant cycle and set up a 2010-2011 workplan. Advocacy is considered a priority with defined areas such as for access to treatment, for better funding by the Global Fund and Government Commitment, and for scaling up of prevention of vertical transmission in rural areas. RACs were tasked to prepare updates on HIV infection trends in each of the coverage countries, challenges in term of access to treatment, funding scenarios and where each of the countries is achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

RACs also decided not to renew a contract with RIP+, to find a new fiscal agency in Cote d’Ivoire and to rotate 2/3 RAC membership and recruit all new two-year-term CRP membership.

Southeast Asia - Rico Gustav

Asia Pacific Network of PLHIV (APN+), Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and Thai AIDS activists marched against the EU-India Free trade agreement at the opening of the European film festival in Bangkok in mid-October. Activists handed over a petition to representatives of the European Trade Commission demanding the removal of all TRIPS-Plus provisions from the current and all future trade agreements with developing countries. Already the impact of these policies has been felt by patients: under EC customs regulations, legitimate generic medicines destined for developing countries have been detained in European ports, putting the lives of patients at risk. APN+ works closely with MSF’s Access to Essential Medicines Campaign in Southeast Asia to add our voices to a growing global campaign to stop Europe’s attempts to restrict access to these medicines for patients in the developing world. Go to http://action.msf.org to sign the petition.

APN+ is also in the process of developing a treatment database that compiles information regarding treatment (diagnostics, costing, programs and policy) in order to provide a snapshot of treatment access in the region in a user-friendly database. Expected to launch in Q1 2011, the data will incorporate indicators and epidemiological stats from the UNAIDS M&E database, AIDS Data hub and World Bank database.

The Caribbean - Patricia Figuaroa

RACs of the Caribbean region in September agreed in the last meeting in Caracao to the defined mission of Caribbean Treatment Action Group (CTAG): To promote and support community-based organisations that focus on literacy-based education and evidence-building advocacy. The RACs reviewed performance for 2009 and emphasized the need to set strategic directions for CTAG work and set funding priorities for the next round of the grant cycle. In addition to treatment preparedness and harm reduction, the RACs include positive prevention, prevention strategies and regional/national advocacy for access to treatment in the context of sexual diversity as the foremost priorities.

It also suggests CRP membership be comprised of independent technical reviewers who are outsourced and selected by an application process and the RAC-sub committee on CRP. The coordinator also ran a session providing basic fundraising tips to the RACs.

East Africa - Rose Kaberia

East Africa Treatment Action Movement (EATAM), Aids and Rights Alliance of Southern Africa (ARASA) and Kenya Legal and Ethical Issues in HIV (KELIN) held a press conference and demonstration demanding the government of Kenya allocate more funds for health. Commitments were announced to push for expediting the creation of the National Health Insurance fund along with special attention to health spending for the next parliamentarian session on budget allocation. In support of the Third Voluntary Global Fund Replenishment Meeting held on the October 4 and 5 in New York City, at which governments and donors signaled their financial commitment towards the Global Fund for the next three years, there were several public demonstrations, press conferences and other actions organized in more than 10 countries across Africa on September 28.

With continued focus on country-level work for this month, EATAM called for justice for TB patients in Kenya who were sentenced to eight-month imprisonment for non-adherence to TB treatment. The discussion was brought up on ITPC listserv in August. Go to

http://itpcnewsletter.blogspot.com/2010/09/itpc-summary-listserv-august-september.html for full details of the case.