Fighting HIV/AIDS in Haiti

Haiti faces the worst HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Western Hemisphere. Across this small island nation an estimated 300,000 people—6 percent of the adult population —live with HIV/AIDS. Last year, approximately 30,000 Haitians died of the disease, the leading cause of death among sexually active adults and young people. Although Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere, the comprehensive rural health services it offers in its central plateau stand as exemplary models of HIV/AIDS care and treatment for other low- to middle-income countries around the world.

For the past several years, many healthcare workers in Haiti have begun to implement a number of successful programs to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS. A Global Fund grant of US$24 million will support the expansion of those programs as well as the implementation of new ones that will capitalize on the existing skills and knowledge of the country’s public health workforce. Prevention activities include:

• Promotion of safe sex through mass communication campaigns that will reach as many as 1.5 million youth, 4,000 men who have sex with men and 18,000 commercial sex workers;
• Voluntary counseling and testing services that will reach as many as 300,000 people each year;
• Treatment of 325,000 new cases of sexually transmitted infection, to decrease the risk of HIV transmission during sexual intercourse; Protection of blood supplies by providing annually 12,000 new blood bags which have been certified HIV negative;
• Prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, reaching more than 12,000 HIV-positive pregnant women each year to reduce by half the current 1.5 percent incidence of HIV-positive births; and
• Expansion of a unique antiretroviral therapy program piloted in Haiti by non-governmental organizations, using community-based, directly observed treatment to ensure that the appropriate protocols and treatment regimens are followed for patients who suffer from the common co-infection of HIV and tuberculosis.
• Care and support for people living with HIV/AIDS will also focus on grassroots interventions that offer awareness-building among community leaders, support groups, home visits to families, foster parenting of orphans and vulnerable children and the distribution of food and monthly hygiene kits.

Haiti consistently demonstrates a high level of political commitment in the fight against pandemic disease, and First Lady Mildred Trouillot Aristide chairs her nation’s Country Coordinating Mechanism. Another member of the team is a journalist, who ensures by his trade that all activities related to the Global Fund are conducted with complete transparency. The non-profit branch of Haiti’s largest commercial bank acts as one of two Principal Recipients that manage Global Fund financing. Under the guidance of this strong local team, a wide range of actors are implementing programs supported by the Global Fund. Presently, the government is in the process of developing nation-wide systems and normative policies to guide HIV/AIDS programming, while 90 percent of Global Fund financing backs the work of nongovernmental organizations, faith-based organizations and the private sector.

As one of four initial countries to receive support from the Global Fund, Haiti has already accepted as much as US$8 million in grant awards. Since May 2002, these funds have been channeled directly to non-governmental organizations to:

• Reopen a public health clinic and operating room, stock five public clinics with essential drugs and provide basic laboratory services to four clinics;
• Expand school-based prevention programs and access to voluntary testing, counseling and prenatal screening, and increase mother-to-child prevention coverage by fivefold; and
• Enroll nearly a thousand people living with HIV/AIDS in programs that provide antiretroviral treatment, with more enrolling every day.