PANCAP HOLDS THIRD CAPACITY-BUILDING WORKSHOP FOR PLH

​(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) Approximately fifty persons living with HIV (PLH) from 16 Caribbean countries will be trained at a capacity-building workshop hosted by the Pan Caribbean Partnership against HIV and AIDS Coordinating Unit (PANCAP) and the Caribbean Network for People Living with HIV and AIDS.

With funding support from the Global Fund Round 9 Grant, the workshop will be held on 21-22 May, 2013, in Trinidad and Tobago, and is the third workshop on the Caribbean HIV epidemic and the regional response for PLH.

The training is organized to enable PLWAs to advocate for universal access to services and to apply the principles of community competence to prevention treatment and care. It is expected that participants will be integrated into their national response as advocates and service providers to get people into service.

The available evidence suggests that social and cultural barriers reflected in the legal, policy, and other arrangements, hinder acceptance and integration of PLWA and persons affected by HIV, as well as of those most vulnerable to the virus. According to the PCU Global Fund Strategy Officer, Mr. Dereck Springer, “directly and indirectly these obstacles drive the HIV epidemic, because they restrict access to HIV services, particularly by groups that are also marginalized for other reasons, such as sex workers, gay men and other men who have sex with men, drug users, youth and migrants…..it is therefore important to continuously facilitate an enabling environment for universal access to HIV services for everyone, whoever they are and wherever they are”.

To date, more than one hundred PLH have been trained via this PANCAP/CRN+/Global Fund initiative.