The third meeting of the Regional Advisory Council of the Regional Community Observatory (CCR) on Treatment in West Africa in the context of the fight against AIDS was held on 23 and 24 October 2018 in Abidjan.
To support the Regional Community Treatment Observatory, the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC) has set up a Regional Advisory Council (RAC). This Regional Advisory Council is an inclusive body composed of government institutions, technical and financial partners, project target groups, key civil society actors and experts.
It remains a framework for discussion, reflection, orientation and advocacy. The first meeting of the CCR was held on October 26 and 27, 2017 in Abidjan (Côte d'Ivoire); with the objective of officially setting up the Regional Advisory Council, reflecting on the first data collected by ORCT-WA, and initiating a discussion on the key issues to be addressed in the region through advocacy. It was followed by a second meeting from April 17 to 18, 2018 in Abidjan and was an opportunity for members to fully play their role and define the orientations for advocacy activities in 2018.
This third meeting, which also took place on Ivorian soil, made it possible to share the progress made in 2018 by the ORCT-WA Project, to analyze the quantitative and qualitative data collected from July 2017 to June 2018, to finalize and validate the advocacy of the ORCT-WA for 2019 and finally to identify ways of sustaining the Community Regional Observatory on Treatment.
The meeting was chaired by the Vice-President of the CCR Christine Gonhi-Houssou, with the technical support of the ORCT-WA team and PACCI, in its capacity as Regional Academic Institute.
In 2016, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria approved a three-year grant (January 2017-December 2019) to enable the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC) to support the development of a Regional Community Observatory on HIV Treatment in West Africa.
This project is based on strengthening networks of people living with HIV (PLHIV) so that they collect and analyze quantitative and qualitative data on barriers to access to HIV treatment and care.
The main objective of the project is to improve access to antiretroviral treatment for PLHIV in 11 priority countries in West Africa. These countries are Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo.

Interview with Mr. Inoncent Laison, President of CCR Côte d'Ivoire and Mr. Alain Manouan, Director of the ORCT-OA project