On September 2, the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission held a workshop and conference on the theme of ‘Organisation of Medical Care at Penitentiary Institutions’ at the Ministry of Justice in Moscow. During his opening speech, the Ambassador of the United States of America to the Russian Federation John Beyrle underlined the US Government’s interest in supporting NGOs working within the Russian Prison System, including AIDS Foundation East-West (AFEW). He particularly stressed the importance of the role that NGOs have played in the development of effective health programmes in prisons. 

‘The HIV/AIDS Consortium The Netherlands’, a coalition of Dutch humanitarian organisations that conduct HIV and harm reduction programming in 23 countries around the world, has sent out a plea to the three leading parties in the Netherlands’ coalition government. These letters (available for download below) protest against the recent refusal of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands to continue funding HIV programmes conducted by Dutch NGOs as part of its overseas development programme. As a key member of the Consortium, AIDS Foundation East-West (AFEW) is a signatory to these letters.

The event attracted over 70 participants, including senior representatives of the Ukrainian prison service, Lyudmila Belenko from the Embassy of the Netherlands to Ukraine, Ancella Voets, Head of Project Management at AFEW’s project partner Mainline, Joost van der Meer, AFEW’s Executive Director, and Elena Voskresenskaya, the organisation’s Regional Director for Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova. 

At the conference, speakers emphasised the huge progress that the AFEW project has made towards tackling infectious diseases in prisons and creating a rights-based approach to prison health in Ukraine. Over the three, years of the project, AFEW assisted in setting up a nationwide HIV policy through the development of training curricula and educational materials for inmates and staff, as well as training teams of peer trainers among staff and prisoners. AFEW staff also unveiled the project’s outstanding results:

• An enthusiastic team of 27 national prison trainers and 84 regional trainers who are qualified to educate prisoners and staff on issues of HIV prevention and treatment, healthy living and harm reduction;
• Over 280 employees of the prison service received training. In addition, training equipment and informational support were delivered to all penitentiary institutions in the country;
• A national resource centre on prison health was staffed and equipped on the premises of the state prison service.

Click here further results and to download project materials (in Russian and Ukrainian).

Other highlights included a presentation by Pavel Skala of the International HIV/AIDS Alliance, where he outlined the package of HIV prevention services that are essential for all prison settings. He described the barriers to implementing harm reduction activities (such as substitution treatment and needle exchange) in the Ukrainian context. Download the agenda (Russian language only).

In order to place the Ukrainian experience into context, AFEW’s Executive Director Joost van der Meer gave a presentation on ‘Universal Access for Prisoners in Eastern Europe and Central Asia’ (ppt, 6.48MB). At the close of the conference, he commented on some encouraging prospects for the future:

‘Embedding new procedures and approaches into such a complex prison system was a major achievement by our staff in Ukraine. Most importantly, the training, education and right-based approaches that we introduced are now obligatory for staff in all Ukrainian prisons, which means that we can be sure of the long-term sustainability of our activities. Furthermore, we are delighted that the Swiss government has decided to fund a follow-up programme that will build on our results and further reinforce international good practice in the control of infectious diseases in Ukraine’s prisons.

Overall, I came away from the conference with the feeling that we are convincing decision-makers in Ukraine of the need to support harm reduction. In one session, more than half of participants declared themselves in favour of needle exchange and methadone substitution treatment in prisons. This is the strongest display of support for harm reduction that I have seen at an event in Ukraine.’

Dutch humanitarian public health organisation AIDS Foundation East-West (AFEW) announces a tender for sub-grants to local non-governmental organisations and community initiatives in the Republic of Tajikistan. The small-grants programme is being implemented by AFEW on behalf of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The aim of the grant programme is to support initiatives that seek to increase the quantity and quality of: HIV and STI prevention services for women in high-risk groups; care and support for people living with HIV; client management for prisoners at the pre-release stage; and social integration services for newly-released prisoners.

The aim of the conference is to review the results of this project and the project on ‘Improving Access to HIV Prevention and Care Programmes for Injecting Drug Users and in Prison Settings in the Russian Federation’, which have both been running since 2007.

During the conference, AFEW intends to present the results of the project at both the regional and federal levels, offer a preliminary evaluation of the client management programme and encourage discussion about its effectiveness among representatives of regional partner organisations.

The conference programme also includes reports from partners involved in implementing the client management programme, who will outline the lessons learned during the project. Some of these will be given as presentations during the actual conference and the rest will be published in a conference book, which will be given to all participants.

Participating in this round-up event will be representatives of UNODC, Federal Penitentiary Service, World Health Organisation, International Labour Organisation and the scientific community of the Moscow State Pedagogical University, among others.

We invite you to join the conference to learn more about the results of major client management initiatives in the prison and civil sectors in Russia, as well as to help us develop recommendations to ensure the successful continuation of these activities in the future.

Contacts

For more information or to register for the event, please contact:

Elena Demchenko, Project Specialist (Client Management Programmes), elena_demchenko(at)afew.org, +7 (495) 980 1322.

Venue

2 Semonovsky Val, Moscow

AIDS Foundation East-West (AFEW)

At the closing ceremony of the Global Village, Ilona van de Braak, Director of Communications, AIDS Foundation East-West (AFEW) told delegates about the response to the Vienna Express campaign. She also updated them on the next steps: ‘We have received such an overwhelming response to the Vienna Express – both out there among the many partners who got involved by organising events in their local towns and here at the conference. Our East-West Wish Tree attracted a huge number of visitors and attracted media attention from around the world. Over the past days, we have given interviews to Chinese, French, Austrian, Russian, Ukrainian, American journalists and media representatives of many other nationalities. This is so important – we must make sure that HIV/AIDS remains visible and that the people affected by the epidemic in Eastern Europe and Central Asia receive worldwide attention.

We are now sending bags full of messages to four of the most important decision-makers in the global HIV response – Michel Sidibe (Executive Director of UNAIDS), Michel Kazatchkine Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Christian Kroll (Global Coordinator for HIV/AIDS at UNODC) and Mats Ahnlund (Acting Director of the International AIDS Society). We are keeping our promise – every single wish will be delivered to international organisations and health agencies.’

Throughout the campaign and conference, AFEW has run an online blog at www.viennaexpress.org. In the coming weeks, we will continue to use the blog to post news from the final Vienna Express activities and to publicise the core message of the AIDS2010 conference as encapsulated in the Vienna declaration  .
 
AFEW’s presence at AIDS2010

Aside from the East-West Wish Tree, which formed a popular focal point of the Global Village and attracted wide press coverage, AFEW also ran a photo booth during the conference. Here, visitors had their pictures taken and chatted to AFEW staff informally about the Vienna Express campaign and the HIV situation in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Three films by AFEW were also shown at the Dutch House, East-West Wish Tree and in special screenings:

‘Client Management in Kazakhstan’

‘The Vienna Express in Tajikistan’

‘The Vienna Express 2010: Towards Universal Access’

Altogether, 29 AFEW staff members and 8 representatives of local partner organisations came to Vienna as part of the AFEW delegation.

The organisation’s Executive Director Joost van der Meer gave a presentation entitled ‘Opioid Substitution Therapy Saves Lives. It’s Official!’ (Download the presentation) , while Anke van Dam, Director of Programmes & Operations, held a session on ‘Sexual Rights as an Essential Ingredient for Preventing the Spread of HIV Worldwide’ (Download the presentation).

At the MSM Pre-Conference, AFEW staff gave the following presentations:

'Anti-Homophobia Strategies in Ukraine', Yury Sarankov.

'MSM and Harm Reduction in Central Asia', Roman Dudnik.

Furthermore, 10 AFEW representatives gave poster presentations at the conference on a diverse range of management, programming, medical and social initiatives connected to the HIV response in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

‘A Comprehensive Approach to the Prevention of Mother-to-child Transmission of HIV in the Russian Regions’, Elena Demchenko.

‘Opportunities for e-Learning in Drug Use Treatment and HIV Prevention in Russia’, Mikhail Volik, MD, and Elizaveta Berezina.

‘Involving Street Children in Creating Educational Cartoons as an Effective Method of HIV Prevention among Street Children in Kyiv, Ukraine’, Anastasia Shebardina.

‘Client Management for Children Living with HIV and their Families in the Osh Region of Kyrgyzstan: Problems and Opportunities’, Olga Yun.

‘Official Guidelines on HIV Prevention among Key Populations at Risk for Staff of Kyrgyzstan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs as an Effective Tool for Strengthening Prevention Measures’, Natalya Shumskaya.

‘Universal Access for Prisoners in Eastern Europe and Central Asia’, Joost van der Meer and Mikhail Volik.

‘No Miscommunication and Chaos, Please!’ Successful Decentralisation in the Communications Department of an International AIDS Organisation’, Ilona van de Braak, Jotham Sietsma and Amy Cartwright.

‘Institutionalisation of Health Promotion and HIV Preventative Education in the State Department of Corrections of Ukraine as an Example of Project Sustainability’, N. Moyseeva.

‘HIV Prevention Courses for Young People under the dance4life Project in the Republic of Moldova’, Olga Osadcii.

Each year, UNAIDS hands out Red Ribbon Awards to 25 community-based organisations that have made an outstanding contribution to reducing the spread and impact of the HIV infection. As UNAIDS Deputy Executive Director, Management & External Relations Jan Beagle explained, ‘UNAIDS is proud to celebrate and honour these groups who have mobilised themselves to meet the needs of the most vulnerable in their communities with energy, passion, and compassion. The red ribbon award winners give a resounding voice to the voiceless.’

The Timur Islamov Charitable Foundation, which is based in Naberezhnye Chelny in the Republic of Tatarstan, was originally initiated as a harm-reduction project in 2006 and has since grown into a full-service centre for drug users. Through social and outreach workers, who are also ex-drug users, the organisation responds to client needs and offers a range of services such as HIV testing, referrals and rehabilitation programmes.

The jury of the Red Ribbon Awards was particularly impressed by the organisation’s strong relationship with local authorities and public health centres in Russia, which has facilitated its provision of services such as HIV testing, referrals, and support programmes for drug users.

In a letter to Dr. Mikhail Volik, AFEW’s Regional Director for the Russian Federation, Timur Islamov shared this exciting news and expressed his gratitude for the role that AFEW has played in his organisation’s development: ‘I would like to thank you for your support during the international Red Ribbon Award Contest 2010. We look forward to continuing our partnership with AFEW and our joint efforts to increase access to HIV prevention and treatment in the Russian Federation. We wish you every success in your future work and hope that we will scale ever new heights together!’

During the opening ceremony of the Global Village on Sunday 18th July, AFEW will give a presentation on the ‘Vienna Express 2010: Towards Universal Access’. Since June 20, this campaign has been travelling the Eastern and Western routes to Vienna. Along the way, it has connected a wide variety of community-level and national events – roundtables, public concerts, press conferences, street campaigns and visits to best-practice HIV projects – across 14 countries. These events have a common ambition: to turn the attention of the world’s media, political leadership and public to the HIV epidemic in its region of operations, Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA). The EECA region, which has faced such unprecedented social and economic upheavals over the past decades, is now struggling to contend with the fastest growing HIV epidemic in the world.

At the conference, AFEW staff will give various poster presentations and run a Vienna Express photo booth (Hall A, #616). At the same time, all the ‘wish leaves’ that we collected during the Vienna Express 2010 campaign will be displayed on the East-West Wish Tree in the Global Village (Hall A, #616).

If you haven’t already done so, please visit our Vienna Express website (www.viennaexpress.org) to leave your message for the wish tree, read our blogs about the events that have taken place from Tajikistan to Georgia and Lithuania or see the latest videos with messages from Anna Kournikova and Michel Sidibe!

Amsterdam, the Netherlands. On June 30, AIDS Foundation East-West (AFEW) released its Annual Report 2009. This year’s report provides an overview of the programme areas and countries where AFEW works, together with full financial information and an analysis of the organisation’s performance and progress on its ‘Strategic Plan for 2007-2010’. Feature articles provide detailed insight into three of the organisation’s most successful projects in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA).

The focus of this conference in Vienna, a city which has served as a crossroads between Western and Eastern Europe throughout its history, will be HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. AIDS Foundation East-West (AFEW) is organising the Vienna Express 2010: Towards Universal Access, which will link up a series variety of public events across Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Central Asia in the build-up to the conference in order to draw wider public and media attention to the epidemic in the region and promote the goal of universal access to HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, care and support.

HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe and Central Asia

The Eastern Europe and Central Asian Region (EECA) is currently home to 1.5 million people living with HIV, cases that are primarily fuelled by injecting drug use. In its activities around AIDS 2010, AFEW will concentrate on the need for expansion of services for injecting drugs users and implementation of harm reduction methodologies. The campaign will also highlight the needs and rights of other key populations at risk (such as street children, sex workers and prisoners).

In EECA, universal access to prevention and treatment for these key populations remains a remote prospect. For example, in 2007, only 315, 000 (or 9%) of the 3.4 million injecting drug users (IDUs) living in the region, were covered by HIV prevention and care services (largely under initiatives financed by the Global Fund). Furthermore, the numbers of people living with HIV who have access to antiretroviral treatment remain very low: Kazakhstan - 41%, Kyrgyzstan - 22.6%, and Ukraine - 35% (Source: National Reports on Monitoring Progress towards the UNGASS Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS - 2008). As a matter of UNGASS policy, these figures do not provide a breakdown on how people were infected. However, since most people living with HIV in the region are injecting drug users, we may extrapolate these access rates to the IDU population.

AFEW Activities for AIDS 2010

In the fortnight before the conference, the Vienna Express 2010: Towards Universal Access will travel the Eastern and Western routes to Vienna. Local partners will organise public events, including concerts, street campaigns, roundtables and visits to best-practice project sites, to promote HIV/AIDS awareness to the media, public and political leaderships of their countries.

AFEW and its partners will provide daily updates on these events and organise coverage of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on a live blog at www.viennaexpress.org, in radio and TV announcements, weblogs, websites, and in photo and film reportsand on AFEW’s and its partners’ websites. So far, tours from Moscow and Amsterdam are planned, but other routes (for instance, through the Balkans or Baltic states) are under consideration. The Vienna Express events will take place in Belgium, Georgia, Germany, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, the Netherlands, Russia and Tajikistan.

Extracts from this coverage will be shown during the Vienna Conference and at regional conference hubs. Along the way, participants and supporters will be invited to write their messages, wishes and demands on leaves for an East-West Wish Tree, which will form the centre-point of the opening ceremony of AIDS2010 on July 18.

What We Aim to Achieve

It is envisaged that the campaign will produce:

• Increased political and public support for harm reduction activities;
• A clear focus on harm reduction and universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA) at AIDS 2010;
• Local festivals and public events on the way to Vienna garnering public and political support for harm reduction;
  United action by NGOs, UN organisations and governmental bodies in raising awareness of harm reduction and universal access;
• The East-West Wish Tree will bring the voices of people from the region to the conference;
• Creative, informational and media initiatives, including reporting and comment on harm reduction in the media in Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Central Asia; coverage in blogs, Twitter, You-Tube, the AFEW website, etc.; publication of IEC materials about harm reduction to update and inform the public on health issues during the tour; and short films that can be shown at AIDS 2010.

Contacts

If you are interested in sponsoring, funding or getting involved in AFEW's initatives in the run-up to Vienna 2010, please contact:

Anke van Dam, Director of Programmes & Operations, anke_van_dam(at)afew.org
Tanne de Goei, Project Consultant, tanne_de_goei(at)afew.org

Download the press release