Public Health Watch Drafts Letter on Universal Access Process
OSI's Public Health Watch and other civil society organizations have drafted a joint letter to UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, pressing for more meaningful civil society involvement in the national Universal Access target setting and monitoring process. UNAIDS has been working to define the concept and framework for universal access to HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, and care by 2010.
To provide guidance to countries in the process, UNAIDS has distributed Operational Guidlines for setting National Targets towards Achieving Universal Access. The Guidelines emphasize the importance of civil society participation, something that the letter states "has not been satisfactory." This may lead to inadequate national guidelines for target setting, which can have a "negative impact on the effectiveneess of implementation and overall sucess of the process."
The letter, which had collected more 180 signatures, was submitted to Peter Piot, the director of UNAIDS, and the directors of all ten UNAIDS co-sponsors, on November 10, 2006.