(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) The sustainability of project activities beyond the scheduled project end date in 2013, Health Information Systems and Integrated Models of Care are among the matters which will be discussed when the European Community Overseas Caribbean Territories (ECOCT) Project Steering Committee meets in Aruba next week.

The Meeting, scheduled for 6-7 September, 2012, is being coordinated by the Pan American Health Organisation/World Health Organisation (PAHO/WHO) with financial support from the European Community (EC). Participants will include Focal Points and Steering Committee members from the British and Dutch Overseas Caribbean Territories, Community Advocates from the Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica and Venezuela. Some PANCAP regional partners including the UNAIDS, OECS HAPU and CRN+ will attend as observers.

Participants will also review progress of the Project’s Year 3 work plan and present updates, achievements and challenges. The European Community Overseas Caribbean Territories (ECOCT) Project, designed to ‘strengthen the integration of the British and Dutch OCTs into the Regional Response to HIV/AIDS through the PANCAP’, was signed by PAHO/WHO and the European Community in 2008. PANCAP is a regional partnership established by CARICOM Heads of Government in 2001 to respond to the HIV and AIDS epidemic in the Caribbean.