Brazzaville, 10 March 2014 – The 5th Inter-Agency Meeting on Coordination and Harmonization of HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis (TB) and Malaria strategies in Africa was held on Friday 7 March 2014 in Brazzaville, the Republic of Congo.
Opening  the one-day  meeting, WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr Luis Sambo, urged African countries to  increase  investment in their health system infrastructure  in order to sustain the appreciable gains so far  made in the fight against HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria. He stated that although good progress had been made in combat-ting the diseases, the current levels of incidence and prevalence were still high.

“HIV/AIDS,TB and Malaria-related interventions should be scaled up to reach populations that are not yet covered.”, the Regional Director said, adding “Doing more requires strengthening national health systems, which is a pre-requisite  for Universal Health Coverage…the pathway towards improved human status and human development”.

In his remarks, the African Union Commissioner for Social Affairs, Dr Mustapha Kaloko called for increased do-nor and partner support to check HIV/AIDS, Malaria and TB, and on recipient countries to generate more re-sources internally to combat the diseases.

He said: “For additional assistance to be effective, donors must be willing to make more flexible, long-term commitments that are integrated with the recipient’s development goals, and recipient countries must work to in-crease their accountability and absorptive capacity as well as mobilizing more domestic resources”.

The AU Commissioner acknowledged the support of partners in Africa’s development, but said that while the continent continued to value cooperation with donors and partners, development assistance programmes should be aligned to continental and national priorities.

Mr. Jean Claude Loukaka, Coordinator of the HIV/AIDS and Health Programme of the Economic Community of Central African States spoke on behalf of Regional Economic Communities (RECs), regional health organizations and non-governmental organizations and civil society organizations (CSOs).

He stated that HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria constituted a triple tragedy for millions of people in at least 25 East West and Central African countries facing humanitarian emergencies, post-conflict situations or in different phases of recovery. Mr. Loukaka therefore called for the prioritization of the 3 diseases in the affected zones and advocated the integration of appropriate interventions in humanitarian assistance.

The Brazzaville meeting was attended by 65 participants from 33 agencies, RECs, NGOs and CSOs.

The inter-agency forum, established in 2006, is organized every 2 years. Its aim is to coordinate and harmonize the work and efforts of continental and regional institutions, the UN system and development partners in order to effectively support Member States to follow-up on commitments and to adequately address challenges in HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria programmes.

The meeting adopted a number of recommendations, including one calling for “smart investments” for enhanced impact of the burden of the three diseases. The meeting also called for action in positioning the diseases on the post-2015 development Agenda; in prioritizing investments in AIDS, TB and Malaria responses in Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo -- which carry the highest burden of the diseases in the Region, and in developing investment cases and economic arguments for use in advocacy for increased domestic and international investments in combating the diseases in Africa.

Other recommendations adopted by the meeting related to: factoring health into conflict response and mitigation programmes; prevention of violence, including gender-based violence; improving access to health services for key populations, and developing strategies to boost the number of people who know their HIV status.