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Strengthening Health Systems Through the AIDS Response |
THSS02 |
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| Venue: |
SR 10 (950) |
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None |
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12:45 - 14:15, 07.08.2008 |
| Code: |
THSS02 |
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Moderator: |
Richard Horton, United Kingdom
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 Click here to see a webcast of this session on kaisernetwork.org
After almost twenty years of woefully inadequate resources devoted to the global response to AIDS, the past five years have seen dramatic increases in funding, from less than $1 billion US per year in 1999 to over $10 billion per year today. While this figure remains well below estimates of what is required to achieve universal access, progress has been made in many areas. As treatment and prevention programmes are taken to scale, there has been criticism over the past year that an expanded AIDS response is somehow detracting from broader health systems strengthening.
This special session will explore different perspectives on the current debate as to whether and how HIV specific funding is contributing to strengthening health systems on a global scale.
Public health experts, health economists, civil society leaders and advocates will discuss the impact of HIV care and treatment on health care services in resource-limited settings. They will address how the energy and momentum generated by the AIDS movement for global health can be further mobilized to ensure broader health systems strengthening for universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support.
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Presentations in this session:
12:45
THSS0201
Powerpoint (242 KB) | Report back on Antwerp 2008 meeting
Gorik Ooms, Belgium
| 13:00
THSS0202 | Panel discussion
Francisco Songane, Switzerland
Eileen Stillwaggon, United States
Daniel Low-Beer, Switzerland
Aditi Sharma, India
Rolake Odetoyinbo, Nigeria
Prasada Rao, Thailand
Carissa Etienne, Switzerland
| 13:15
THSS0203
Powerpoint (3.11 MB) | Panel discussion
Carissa Etienne, Switzerland
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Rapporteur report
Leadership report by Rebecca Hodes
This session focused on arguably the greatest controversy in public health at present: the notion that HIV has overshadowed other issues in public health to the detriment of the focus on other daunting and worthy health problems.
All speakers supported the benefits of HIV diagnostics, treatment and monitoring on health systems in their entirety.
E. Stillwaggon detailed the economic benefits in integrating HIV prevention and treatment into primary health care, explaining that disease burdens were evidently inter-connected, and citing the example of a tenfold HIV viral load increase in patients with malaria.
Stillwaggon strongly supported treatments for schistosomiasis, trichonosomiasis and philiariasis as means of reducing the globe’s overall disease burden, but argued that preventative measures are first prize. She concluded: ‘We can only achieve our goal if we stop chasing one virus, one person at a time’.
A. Sharma highlighted the danger of the debate that the HIV epidemic has been disproportionately funded. She argued that this contention has been used to shroud a litany of broken promises by donors and governments. The result is that donor communities are short-changing existing HIV initiatives, and not promising new funds. She argued that HIV is going out of fashion, and that ‘health systems’ are now coming into vogue.
Sharma explained that the AIDS response has not distorted health systems, but has rather emphasised their inherent weaknesses. She explained community health care workers have carried by far the greatest burden of care, and that HIV has extended heath-care to marginalized groups across the globe.
F. Songane, the former Minister of Health of Mozambique, emphasised the importance of political leadership and community solidarity, and argued that the AIDS epidemic had ‘delivered a wake-up call’ on the state of global health.
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