PANCAP to host sensitisation forum in Kingston today
THE Pan-Caribbean Partnership against HIV and AIDS (PANCAP) will host a parliamentarian sensitisation forum in Kingston today.
It is being funded by the CARIFORUM 10th European Development Fund Programme of Support for Wider Caribbean Cooperation.
The forum, according to a release, forms part of a series of engagements with parliamentarians, which commenced in 2013 under the PANCAP Justice for All programme. The objectives of the forum are to outline the challenges to the Jamaica HIV response, including stigma and discrimination that serve as barriers to achieving the UNAIDS 90-90-90 targets and ending the AIDS epidemic, define parliamentarians’ legislative, representational and oversight roles toward addressing the challenges to ending the AIDS epidemic and pursue actions with specific timelines aligned with parliamentarians’ legislative, representational and oversight roles.
Participants will be engaged in making specific recommendations for the establishment of a National Parliamentarian Action Group to function as a coordinating mechanism to facilitate communication with and among National Parliamentary Committees, with specific reference to the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal number three – ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages — with a specific target that by 2030 to end the epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and neglected tropical diseases and combat hepatitis, water-borne diseases and other communicable diseases.
The forum will also seek to identify ways to collaborate with other stakeholders, including faith leaders, civil society, youth, and key populations to respond to HIV.
Featured speakers today include Delroy Chuck, minister of justice; Pearnel Charles, speaker of the House of Representatives; Dr Peter Phillips, leader of the opposition; Fredrik Ekfeldt, deputy head of mission, minister-counsellor at the European Union Delegation to Jamaica, Belize, The Bahamas, Cayman Islands and Turks and Caicos; and Dr Edward Greene, special advisor to PANCAP.
Representatives of the Ministry of Health, UN agencies and civil society organisations will also be attending.
Dereck Springer, director of PANCAP, will preside over the meeting.
