(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) The Pan Caribbean Partnership against HIV and AIDS (PANCAP) in collaboration with the German Technical Cooperation Agency (GIZ), EPOS Health Management (EPOS) and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) will host a Roundtable under the theme “How to Improve Access to HIV Services for Migrants in the Caribbean” at the 2011 Caribbean HIV and AIDS Conference (CHIV) in The Bahamas.

The roundtable meeting will take place on Sunday 20 November 2011 at 11 am in the room Grand F, Atlantis Conference Centre and will feature a panel of HIV and migration experts. The panel will include Dr. Carlos Van Der Laat, Regional Health and Migration Specialist, IOM; Ms. Veronica Cenac, Attorney-at-Law; Mr. John Waters, Medical Director, Centro de Orientacion e Investigacion Integral (COIN); Dr. Perry Gomez, Director, National AIDS Programme, Bahamas and Professor Bernard Liautaud, Head, Day Hospital for Infectious Disease, University Hospital of Fort-de-France, Martinique.

Discussions will focus on legal, policy and economic aspects of migration and HIV in the Caribbean as well as community and social approaches to dealing with immigrants.

PANCAP is currently working in partnership with GIZ and EPOS in executing a technical assistance grant from the Federal Republic of Germany to enhance the accessibility and quality of HIV prevention, care and treatment services for migrant populations in the Caribbean. The name of the project is “Improving Access of Migrant Populations to HIV Services in the Caribbean” and is in keeping with one of PANCAP’s strategic objectives of providing universal access to migrant populations.

The project focuses on five pilot countries Antigua & Barbuda, Guyana, St Maarten, Suriname and Trinidad & Tobago and has four interlinking components which seek to: enhance the policy and legal frameworks governing access of migrant populations to HIV and AIDS services at regional and national level;

identify and pilot effective financing mechanisms/models to secure the access of migrant populations to HIV services in the pilot countries;

identify and strengthen organizations with the potential to represent the interests of migrant populations regionally and within the pilot countries, and ensuring their participation in relevant national and regional HIV policy planning bodies; and, enhance the number of public, private and non-governmental entities offering HIV services tailored to specific needs of male, female and adolescent stakeholders among migrant population groups, including the identification of evidence-based best practice approaches.

And four key deliverables: New policies and legislations Innovative Health Financing Mechanisms Empowered organizations and most vulnerable migrants Friendly migrant services

It is expected that the roundtable will produce recommendations that will feed into the project to improve migrants’ access to HIV services in the Caribbean.