On the sidelines of the Global Fund's Sixth Replenishment Conference in Lyon, France, the Civil Society Institute for HIV and Health has signed a partnership agreement.
The institute brings together 81 organisations from 19 countries with the aim of ensuring greater policy influence at global and national level and galvanising civil society expertise in programme delivery.
"This partnership is a recognition of our essential contribution," said Daouda Diouf, Director ofEnda Sante and head of the Institute's Steering Committee.
"It is clear that community-based approaches are agile and adapted to the response to pandemics," said Jérémie Pellet, Director General of Expertise France. "They are proven and give us hope.
According to the newspaper Le Monde, this partnership is all the more important as "African NGOs" are the "strong link in the fight against HIV".
"About ten community health observatories have been set up in Africa in recent years. They collect data from patients, alert the health authorities when there are stock-outs in the supply of medicines, report acts of discrimination, etc. To gain visibility, some eighty associations involved in the fight against HIV have decided to create the Civil Society Institute for Health in West and Central Africa.
We want to get the major donors to take greater account of the specific context of our region, which is marked by crises and low investment in health," defends Daouda Diouf, the Senegalese director of ENDA Santé.
In the face of weak health systems, we have a very vibrant civil society and community actors. Yet only 20% of the programmes funded are community-based.
