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Since the start of the pandemic, UNAIDS has been helping people living with and living with HIV to resist the impacts of COVID-19.
In January and February, when COVID-19 forced a lockdown in Wuhan, China, UNAIDS China Country Office began receiving social media messages from people living with HIV, expressing their frustration and seeking help.
A survey of people living with HIV in China, jointly designed and launched by UNAIDS, found in February that the COVID-19 outbreak was having a major impact on the lives of people living with HIV in the country. , with nearly a third of people living with HIV reporting that due to roadblocks and traffic restrictions in some locations in China, they risked finishing HIV treatment in the coming days.
The blockades also led to people living with HIV who had traveled far from their hometowns not being able to return to where they live and access HIV services, including care, from their usual care providers. sanitary.
UNAIDS China Country Office worked with the BaiHuaLin alliance and other community partners to urgently reach people at risk of running out of medicine to make sure they get their refills. By the end of March, UNAIDS-organized special collections and mailings of HIV medicines had reached more than 6,000 people in Wuhan. UNAIDS has also donated personal protective equipment to civil society organizations serving HIV-infected people, hospitals and others to help in the very early stages of the epidemic.
But UNAIDS China Country Office hasn’t just helped people in China. Liu Jie, head of community mobilization at UNAIDS Country Office in China, was surprised when she received a call from Poland in March. “A Chinese man introduced himself, saying he is stuck and will run out of HIV medicines in two days,” he said.
With travel restrictions closing more and more countries, man can neither go home nor access medicine. Not knowing what to do, he contacted a community-based Chinese organization and through it contacted UNAIDS in Beijing. After a series of phone calls and followed up by the National AIDS Center in Poland: 24 hours later, Ms. Liu received a photo of the same man who called her, holding a box of HIV medicines.
The man stranded in Poland was not the only example of UNAIDS helping people get the care they needed. In May, UNAIDS helped hundreds of stranded people obtain HIV medicine in countries around the world.
One day before Deepak Sing (not his real name) planned to return to India, all international travel had stopped, and he was stuck in Luanda, Angola. “I have visited more than 10 pharmacies and explored antiretroviral drug delivery options from India to Angola, but without success,” he said. UNAIDS National Director for Angola guided Mr. Sing to the National AIDS Institute in Angola, which arranged a conference call with a doctor because one of the drugs Mr. Sing took is not yet in use. in the country. The doctor suggested a replacement and in less than 24 hours he took his medication.
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic it was understood that one way to ensure that people being treated for HIV can continue to access their medications and to avoid the risk of transmitting the novel coronavirus was to ensure that people living together with HIV received multiple months’ supplies of their treatment.
One of the first to adopt the dispensation for multiple months was Thailand, which announced in late March that it would offer three to six month doses of antiretroviral therapy to social security beneficiaries. After the decision, UNAIDS worked closely with the Ministry of Public Health and its partners to support the adaptation of the same policy for all health insurance schemes.
UNAIDS has supported countries around the world to ensure that people living with HIV access supplies for multiple months of HIV care. For example, in Senegal in May, weaknesses in the supply chain, including inadequate needs assessments in some clinics for central antiretroviral therapy supplies and irregular supplies, meant that not all people in need of such supplies received them. UNAIDS supported the government in monitoring orders for antiretroviral drugs and strengthening the supply chain.
A modeling group convened by the World Health Organization and UNAIDS estimated in May that if no efforts were made to mitigate and overcome disruptions to health services and supplies during the COVID-19 pandemic, a six months of antiretroviral therapy could lead to more than 500,000 more deaths from AIDS-related diseases and that the gains made in preventing mother-to-child HIV transmission could be reversed, with new HIV infections among children up to 162 %.
Physical removal and hygiene recommendations to combat the novel coronavirus are particularly difficult for some communities to follow. In April, the UNAIDS Regional Support Team for Eastern and Southern Africa and Reckitt Benckiser joined forces to distribute more than 195,000 hygiene packs to people living with HIV in the Eastern and Southern African region. Each package consisted of a three-month supply of Dettol soap and Jik surface cleaner and was distributed in 19 countries through UNAIDS national offices and networks of people living with HIV as part of efforts to reduce HIV. exposure to the impact of COVID-19 among people living with HIV.
Kyrgyzstan saw a state of emergency imposed on some regions in March, which resulted in loss of earnings for many people. The National Office of UNAIDS in Kyrgyzstan, with the support of a Russian technical assistance program, organized the delivery of food packages for the families of HIV-positive people, along with coloring books, markers and watercolor sets for the children of the people living with HIV, to help them get over the block. “We hope that this little help will somehow allow people living with HIV to stay in treatment,” UNAIDS Country Manager for Kyrgyzstan said at the time.
UNAIDS Country Office for Angola has leveraged its partnerships to reach thousands of people in Luanda with food baskets. UNAIDS and partners provided support for women who inject drugs in camps and settlements in Dar es Salaam, United Republic of Tanzania, while a partnership that included UNAIDS provided money transfers to vulnerable families in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire , for nutrition and food safety and basic health kits.
Members of key populations and people living with HIV have been particularly affected by the response to COVID-19. UNAIDS supported the rights of gay men and other men who have sex with men, transgender people, sex workers, drug injectors and prisoners during the pandemic.
The global network of sex work projects and UNAIDS in April called on countries to take immediate and critical action to protect the health and rights of sex workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. UNAIDS embarked on a project with the Caribbean Sex Work Coalition to help national networks address the knowledge, HIV prevention and social support needs of sex workers during COVID-19. “Sex workers need to be included in national social protection programs and many of them need emergency financial support,” said the director of the UNAIDS Caribbean Sub-Regional Office.
UNAIDS Jamaica provided financial support to ensure that Transwave, a transgender rights organization, had personal protective equipment and to complement the provision of care packages and ensured that transgender-related issues were included in the company’s coordinated response. civilian against HIV to COVID-19 in the country. “COVID-19 has exposed how vulnerable people are when they do not have equal access to opportunities, justice and health care,” said UNAIDS Jamaica Community Mobilization Advisor. “This is why it is so important and inspiring that Transwave has continued its core work in all of this.”
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, UNAIDS has reiterated the call that governments must protect human rights and prevent and address gender-based violence. In June, UNAIDS released a report highlighting six critical actions to put gender equality at the heart of COVID-19 responses, showing how governments can address the gender and discriminatory impacts of COVID-19.
“Just as HIV has been a mirror for inequality and injustice, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the discrimination women and girls struggle against every day of their lives,” said Winnie Byanyima, UNAIDS Executive Director. , at the launch of the report.
In August, UNAIDS urged governments to protect the most vulnerable populations, particularly key populations at highest risk of HIV, in a report intended to help governments take positive steps to address human rights concerns in context. evolving COVID-19.
In the following month, UNAIDS released a report showing how countries struggling with COVID-19 are using the experience and infrastructure of the AIDS response to ensure a more robust response to both pandemics.
In October, UNAIDS released a guide to reducing stigma and discrimination during COVID-19 responses. Drawing on 40 years of experience from responding to AIDS, the guide was based on the latest evidence on what works to reduce HIV-related stigma and discrimination and applies it to COVID-19. As with the HIV epidemic, stigma and discrimination can significantly undermine responses to COVID-19. People who have internalized stigma or anticipate stigmatizing attitudes are more likely to avoid health care services and are less likely to be tested or admit symptoms, eventually sending the pandemic underground.
Looking ahead, UNAIDS has joined the call for a popular COVID-19 vaccine – a vaccine that is accessible and available to all.
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