2006 Working Group Highlights

Enabled member organizations working in Haiti to come together around a common strategy and submit a successful bundled proposal to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria to expand community-based HIV/AIDS programming with detection of HIV/AIDS through voluntary counseling and testing and identification and enrollment of orphans and vulnerable children into health and social services. CORE Group served as a neutral facilitator to enable the organizations to learn about each other and to negotiate planning for a coordinated approach to geographic coverage, programmatic focus, monitoring and evaluation strategies, and budgetary decision-making. An initial CORE Group investment of $36,000 led to further funding through the Global Fund for two years beginning July 2006 for a total of $3.6 million.

2005 Working Group Highlights:

Held two PVO/NGO workshops to field test draft programming guides for HIV/AIDS: 1) Programming for Voluntary Counseling and Testing for HIV/AIDS: A Guide for Working in the Community and 2) Saving Mothers, Saving Children: Preventing Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV/AIDS: A Guide for Working in the Community in Malawi (January 2005) and India (May 2005).

2004 Working Group Highlights:

Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT) for HIV/AIDS
In partnership with FHI/IMPACT, the Working Group developed a field guide for NGO program managers titled, Programming for Voluntary Counseling and Testing for HIV/AIDS: A Guide for Working in the Community. More than 95 percent of people living with HIV/AIDS in developing countries do not know they are infected with HIV, which increases the spread of the disease and limits their access to care, treatment and family support. The guide highlights the recent shift from VCT, in which clients initiate testing to learn their HIV status, to routine offering of HIV testing, especially in antenatal clinics where pregnant women can "opt out" of testing. The guide also discusses the shift to diagnostic HIV testing, in which providers initiate an HIV test when a person shows signs or symptoms consistent with an HIV-related disease (such as during tuberculosis care). The guide outlines common barriers to HIV testing and how to overcome them; describes elements of a comprehensive VCT program; guides NGOs in deciding if and how to implement an HIV testing and counseling program in the community, and provides a related set of tools. The guide will be field tested in Malawi in January 2005.

Preventing Mother-to-Child Transmission (PMTCT) of HIV
Together with FHI/IMPACT and the CORE Safe Motherhood and Reproductive Health Working Group, the Working Group developed Saving Mothers, Saving Children: Preventing Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV/AIDS: A Guide for Working in the Community. The guide is written for people who design and manage health programs that use community-based agents to provide health care and counseling to pregnant women and their families. The guide describes how to protect women from HIV/AIDS and unintended pregnancy; prevent MTCT during the antenatal period, during labor and delivery, and during the postnatal period; provide care and support to HIV-positive mothers and families; and design and carry out a PMTCT program. Tools for use by community-based agents are included. The guide will be field tested in Malawi in January 2005.

Pharmaceuticals for HIV/AIDS
In collaboration with Christian Connections for International Health and the RPM+ project, the Working Group sponsored a February 2004 meeting titled, Pharmaceuticals for HIVAIDS: What Role Can PVOs and FBOs Play? VCT, PMTCT, and other HIV/AIDS care and treatment interventions rely heavily on the availability of testing kits, antiretrovirals and other HIV/AIDS-related pharmaceuticals and commodities. New global and national initiatives are making these interventions more feasible than ever at the community level. More than 100 donor, NGO and faith-based organization representatives discussed how to make these interventions available to the communities in which they work.

NGO Representation
Through CORE's HIV/AIDS Working Group listserve, meetings and policy forums, members shared numerous articles, field observations and changing policy guidance. Meetings and forums included the XV International AIDS Conference in Bangkok, Thailand, the NGO Forum for Health at the WHO Assembly in Geneva (May 2004), the GFATM Partnership Forum in Bangkok (July 2004), and the Alliance 2015 HIV/AIDS Policy Group meetings throughout Europe.