An international coalition has been launched to improve planning and delivery of efforts to scale up access to antiretroviral therapy in resource-limited settings.
Professor Joep Lange, President of the International AIDS Society, said at the launch of the International HIV Treatment Access Coalition (ITAC): "We need to map out what needs to be done but nobody can do that alone."
ITAC aims to mobilize and augment its partners' efforts to increase affordability, availability and uptake of HIV treatments. The experiences of pilot HIV treatment programmes offer valuable lessons for scaling up, say the Coalition partners, but need to be widely disseminated.
ITAC will add value to current efforts by serving as a platform for exchanging information and enabling knowledge gained from small programmes to be applied to much larger populations. It will also pool and coordinate the technical expertise necessary to make this happen. The coalition's power lies in the complementary skills and capacities of its partners. Different members will contribute to different elements of the coalition's plan of action.
Priorities include:
- Sharing information about pilot initiatives so that lessons learnt can be applied to scale up programmes
- Fostering national and international leadership and advocacy, including maintaining pressure for lower drug prices
- Helping to galvanize and coordinate donor action to assist governments embarking upon treatment programmes
- Support the implementation of national HIV treatment programmes, including technical support in planning, procurement of drugs and other commodities, training and human resources
- Monitoring and evaluating programmes: in particular determining the impact of treatment on care and prevention, and how treatment will be integrated into, and boost, an overall comprehensive response to HIV/AIDS in resource limited countries
- Disseminating information about treatment programmes, including training manuals and best practice models
- Promoting an operational research agenda to improve HIV/AIDS service delivery systems (public and private), as part of wider efforts to improve overall systems performance
- Quality control including services, drug manufacturing and provider accreditation.
International HIV Treatment Access Coalition partners include NGOs, donors and governments, people living with HIV/AIDS and their advocates, the private sector, academic and research institutions and international organisations working to overcome the challenges of expanding ARV access.
The International HIV/AIDS Alliance, an aidsmap partner, is an ITAC partner.