Pangaea to Support China Gates Foundation Program to Develop New Models for HIV Prevention in China
San Francisco, December 15, 2009 - Pangaea Global AIDS Foundation has received a two-year $2.4 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support efforts by the Chinese Ministry of Health and China-based nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to create a sustainable model of HIV prevention that demonstrates the feasibility of reducing new HIV infections throughout China.Over the grant period, Pangaea will provide technical assistance to national partners within the Ministry of Health and selected NGOs to assist them in developing new models for successful HIV prevention.
“Pangaea’s support will focus on bringing HIV-positive persons into a system of care that is equipped to provide a continuum of prevention and treatment services with linkages between NGOs and government health care providers,” said Dr. Dennis Israelski, Chief Medical Officer for Pangaea and Principal of the grant. “The ultimate goal of the program is to improve health outcomes for HIV positive persons in high-risk and under-served populations and to reduce HIV transmission linked with these populations.”
The Gates Foundation’s funding for HIV/AIDS prevention in China supports priorities in China's national AIDS plan and helps increase access to effective prevention programs that target the people most vulnerable to HIV infection in large urban centers. It also aims to increase the proportion of people living with HIV/AIDS that know their HIV-positive status and ensure that they receive adequate care, support and behavior intervention counseling to prevent further transmission. The program is operating in 15 selected cities throughout China.
Part of Pangaea’s role will be to assist the various government and NGO partners as they come together in the 15 cities to identify ways in which existing barriers to HIV treatment can be overcome and to develop and implement appropriate standards of care and follow-up services.
Practically, Pangaea will provide support to its local partners to help ensure that people who are tested for HIV:
- receive their confirmatory test and results,
- are linked to and receive quality care and treatment in the hospitals, and
- are linked to and receive psychosocial counseling and a system of supportive case management to improve quality of life and to prevent the further transmission of HIV.
To help achieve these goals Pangaea will be partnering with AIDS Care China, a service-based NGO in China which delivers HIV care and support with meaningful participation of persons living with HIV. Over the last four years, Pangaea has worked closely with AIDS Care China and the Yunnan Bureau of Health/Clinton Foundation program to enhance the linkage between the community and populations infected and at-risk for HIV within the health care system in Yunnan province. This collaboration has increased the success of retaining people in HIV/AIDS treatment programs over time.
Pangaea in China
Since 2004, as a partner with the Clinton Foundation China HIV/AIDS Initiative (CHAI), Pangaea has been providing technical assistance to the China Ministry of Health in support of expanding a national HIV/AIDS treatment program. Initial efforts focused on developing national treatment guidelines for ART, working with provincial authorities in Anhui and Yunnan provinces to provide clinical training and mentoring of health care professionals, and to support the development and scale up of comprehensive HIV/AIDS treatment models linked with community based support services.
For the past four years Pangaea has been closely involved with hospitals delivering care in Yunnan, providing technical assistance to doctors, nurses and other health staff in support of bringing people into care and retaining them in care over time. A special focus has been on treating the drug- and HIV-related issues of injection drug users and working together with local authorities to expand treatment access to populations in drug detention centers.
Contact:
Carl Whitaker
510.847.0599
cwhitaker@pgaf.org
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Pangaea Global AIDS Foundation is a non-profit consulting organization that supports in-country and international partners in the development of healthcare infrastructure for HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention efforts. With a special focus on resource-poor settings and underserved populations, Pangaea helps its partners, including national health ministries, NGOs, universities, foundations, and corporations, strengthen HIV/AIDS treatment infrastructure and systems of care and develop new treatment capacity in order to increase access to care. For more information: www.pgaf.org.
