Share & more
The member states of the Great Lakes Initiative on HIV/AIDS (GLIA) have agreed to strengthen their cooperation on HIV issues in order to reduce the effects of the pandemic in this badly affected region.
During a week-long regional meeting in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, representatives from the GLIA member states – Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania – discussed how to expand the HIV response in the Great Lakes region.
GLIA was created in 1998 to mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS in the region, which continues to suffer serious humanitarian crises that have led to the mass migration of refugees from one country to another.
The World Bank has approved a grant of US $20 million over a four-year period in order to improve the regional response to common HIV issues such as the transmission of the virus among transport workers, refugees, internally displaced populations and returnees.
According to the Rwandan daily, The New Times, the executive secretary of the Rwandan National AIDS Control Commission, Dr Agnes Binagwaho, said: "AIDS has no borders. As people keep on moving from one state to another, the active transmission of HIV becomes easier."
The GLIA council of ministers met on Friday and was expected to launch the organisation’s joint AIDS control programme.
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions