By Pacific Islands AIDS Foundation
With this year’s World AIDS Day theme “Getting to Zero, Zero
new HIV infections, Zero Discrimination, and Zero related AIDS deaths,” the
Pacific region will be joining international communities to commemorate and
promote the message of getting to zero with major events and activities in
respective countries.
UNAIDS has decided that for December 1, 2011, right up until
2015 it’s envisioned that different regions and groups will each year choose
one or all of the zeros that best addresses their situation.
Preparations for the World AIDS Day (WAD) in the region have
commenced and the Pacific Islands AIDS Foundation (PIAF) together with its
partners will be commemorating the day in Fiji, Cook Islands, Tonga, and the
Solomon Islands on the December 1.
Some of the Pacific Island countries have focused on one of the
three zeros as their main theme in which they plan to carryout awareness
raising activities for this year while others have integrated the overall theme
in their activities and PIAF together with its partners have committed their
support.
PIAF has joined in the preparations in the Cook Islands with
the Ministry of Health and other stakeholders to create awareness on Volunteer
Confidentiality Counseling and Testing (VCCT) through the local media.
PIAF’s positive community programme coordinator, Temo Sasau,
says there are a lot of planned lead up events to December 1 and PIAF will link up with its
trained AIDS Ambassadors in respective countries in the region.
Sasau said Fiji had focused on “Zero Discrimination” as its
main theme for this year, and most of the activities wiould heavily promote zero
discrimination in all forms against PLHIV and those affected by HIV and AIDS.
He is also expected in Tonga to participate with WAD activities which have
already commenced with the 16 Days of Human Rights Activism.
Moreover, from the 10 goals set by UNAIDS on this year’s WAD
theme, PIAF continues to strengthen the Regional HIV Response through its legal
programme by fast tracking respective legislative responses in the region.
2011 has been a year that PIAF has partnered with respective governments and national AIDS councils in the Cook Islands, Tuvalu, and
Kiribati to have policies and legislations on HIV enacted.
The programme has taken a legal and rights-based approach that
acknowledges the central role of PLHIV based on the notion that positive people
are the most-effective tool in HIV prevention; the legal response is one of the
most effective responses to HIV; and the evidence based human rights approach
to HIV is the most effective response to HIV.
The legal programme sets out national and regional legal
obligations, and marks out the path to getting to zero by having legislations
in place which oblige leaders to respond better to HIV.
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