African Stigma & Discrimination Forum 2019

The Satellite on Stigma and Discrimination - How to win the Battle was held on 2nd December 2019 in Kigali, as an official part of the ICASA program. The program was in collaboration with IAPAC and a part of the IAPAC Fast-Track Cities program.

Recent reports and surveys have shown that stigma and discrimination still present major problems for people living with HIV . This has negative impact on individual’s daily lives and health, but also can have serious negative impact on the public HIV response, treatment and prevention. There are great differences among countries, but in the Africa region especially key populations still face stigma and discrimination and therefore access to prevention. To get to an overall stronger HIV response, there is an urgent need to address these issues. Eliminating stigma and discrimination associated with HIV is one of the main goals of the Fast-Track Cities Initiative, as it presents a barrier to good health care and accessing services, and therefore a barrier to the elimination of HIV. IAPAC together with other collaborators has set up an online course on the topic. Discrimination and stigma can be experienced at individual, facility, community, or national levels. This requires the commitment of all the relevant stakeholders and therefore, the Fast-Track Cities Initiative presents an ideal platform to address the issues around stigma and discrimination and to develop solutions to solve these issues.

In order to help cities and communities achieve the 90-90-90 goals quicker and sustainably, and to empower and encourage them, it will be of immense help to establish an educational platform that will provide the necessary tools and knowledge to fight stigma and discrimination. With this two-hour educational symposium about lessons learned from the Fast Track Cities Initiative and strategies to fight stigma and discrimination, we aim to reach a wide audience of healthcare providers from the entire African Region. The setting will be informal and offer opportunities to discuss and share experiences relevant in particular to the local and regional settings.

The objectives of this meeting are to:

• Highlight the issues of stigma and discrimination in different settings and from different perspectives
• Summarize key strategies for the elimination of stigma and discrimination
• Strengthen the HIV care cascade in the Asian region, focusing on local solutions to fight stigma and discrimination

We would like to sincerely thank everyone that attended the symposium.