From my work-Inbox and the newsfeed on the Global Fund Website on Monday:
The Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, USAID and the United Kingdom's Department for International Development have decided to scale back HIV prevention funding in Cambodia, Xinhua/ People's Daily reports...organizations made the decision because the country reportedly has achieved satisfactory progress in curbing its HIV/AIDS epidemic. HIV prevalence has declined from about 3.3% in the 1990s to about 0.9% in 2005.
While it is wonderful that Cambodia has been able to successfully reach one of its Millenium Development Goals (Combatting and halting the spread of HIV/AIDS), this new development will raise new problems for Cambodia's population as well as make my work a tad bit harder.
Cambodia's government relies, quite heavily, on the donations of developed countries and both local and international NGOs, ranging from UNAIDS, to the Cambodian Action Research on AIDS and Mobility. This money not only funds a large number of Voluntary Counseling and Treatment centres around the country, but as well helps provide for antiretroviral therapy for an all too small portion of the HIV+ community and helps fund condom supplies for the country's extremely successful 100% Condom Use Program among its sex workers. Such moneys also fund research that advises Cambodia's fairly liberal, albeit corrupt, government. Althought Cambodia has been fairly proactive in its abilities to limit the spread of HIV throughout the country (it received harm reduction with open arms), it remains that which has the highest HIV prevalence in the Asia-Pacific region.
The IOM Cambodia office hasn't really had much activities regarding HIV/AIDS. I hoping to change this during my placement. The assignment that Bruno gave to me was to find advice on potential donors for a Safe Mobility education package entitled For Life, with Love; this is a title that Bruno and I consistently fumble around with. It's essentially a social marketing/health promotion project that seeks to reduce the risk behaviours among vulnerable migrant populations.
There's also this really interesting research project that Bruno's got under his belt...but not yet actually started yet on account of that small problem of funding. It's a Foresight project that seeks to predict the depth and breadth of HIV infection when the new Asian Highway System is built in Cambodia. Given experiences already seen in truck drivers in East Africa, and then mining communities in Zambia, this would be a wonderful piece of work to advise the government in policymaking, no? Of course, it also requires $$, six figures of it to be exact. I really want to see this project come to fruition.
Of course, that will be a bit harder since NGOs will probably be scrapping and fighting over money for the next while. Anyone friends with a Rockefeller or a Vanderbilt?
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