Scheduled to take place on October 14 and 15, 2019, the fourth Meeting of the Regional Advisory Council of the Regional Community Observatory on Treatment in West Africa (ROCT-AO) opened this Monday morning in Abidjan Cocody in the presence of ITPC's Director of Global Programs and Advocacy, Ms. Wame Jallow.
To be able to achieve the sustainable development goal of eliminating AIDS as a threat to public health by 2030, civil society organizations working in the field of health in West Africa have set up the Regional Community Observatory on HIV Treatment.
To do this, this observatory has set itself the task of helping national and regional organizations to facilitate access to HIV treatment for the populations concerned. The Regional Community Observatory on treatment in West Africa hopes through its contribution that by 2020 the West African region will be in line with the standards of the targeted global trends.
The Regional Community Treatment Observatory in West Africa (ORCT-AO) is a consortium led by the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC) and ITPC West Africa. The project aims to increase access to optimal HIV treatment in 11 West African countries (Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo) through systematic monitoring of services by national networks of people living with HIV.
Innocent Laison, President of the Regional Consultative Council (CCR) in his welcome address made a point of specifying the ORCT-AO does not want to be perceived as a simple whistleblower, but wants to be able to get more involved in all that is structural reforms with supervisory authorities.
“The Regional Community Observatory on Treatment in West Africa wants to make proposals on structural reforms. This is why we take the time to analyze, because we offer an innovative model in the field,” said the president of the CCR.
Alain Manouan, Director of ORCT-AO, presenting the major objectives of this fourth meeting, asked the assembly for an in-depth reflection in order to think about how to sustain this tool.
Share evidence from two years of collection and analysis at country and regional level, appreciate how the regional community observatory on treatment in West Africa and the community observatories at country level have influenced the national response and also the regional response and finally seeing together how to capitalize on intelligence in order to sustain the model beyond December 2019. These are the objectives of the fourth Meeting of the Advisory Council.
Created in February 2017 by ITPC, the Regional Community Observatory on Treatment in West Africa collects and analyzes data on the availability, accessibility, acceptability, affordability and appropriateness of care and HIV-related services.
Supported by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, it places particular emphasis on access to HIV services and the quality of these services for five priority populations: pregnant women, young people , men who have sex with men, injecting drug users and sex workers.