The Alliance’s work in China is a response to a low-prevalence epidemic in a highly populous country.  The HIV epidemic is already well-established among populations of injecting drug-users and sexual transmission is beginning to predominate.  Our programme’s focus on supporting the involvement of intravenous drug users (IDU), commercial sex workers (CSW), men who have sex with men (MSM) and people with HIV/AIDS (PLHA) is in recognition of the fact that the epidemic disproportionately affects these groups of people.


China’s response to HIV/AIDS has undergone dramatic developments since the Alliance first set up office here in 2003.  The government has set ambitious targets for a groundbreaking scale-up of its methadone maintenance treatment programme and for the roll out of voluntary counselling and testing services. Access to treatment is being significantly enhanced by the China Cares programme which aims to provide free ARV drugs for rural residents and the urban poor.  By focusing on community involvement the Alliance aims to complement these considerable achievements by making them more accessible to the people they are intended to reach.


The Alliance supports community engagement by providing grants for community groups to carry out HIV prevention or care activities. Alongside these grants, technical support in programmatic or organizational development is provided. The Alliance supports each group to develop and design its programme, to build its skills to deliver the best quality services, and to monitor the progress and effectiveness of its work. Where a management partner is involved, the Alliance also supports this partner to work effectively with the community group.


The need to increase the level of community involvement in HIV/AIDS in China is accepted by both internal and external stakeholders.  It has become one of the pivotal issues around the implementation of Global Fund HIV/AIDS projects in China.  The challenge is not so much to convince people of the “why?” as it is to answer the “how?”  It is our hope that Alliance’s focus on enabling community involvement in the response to HIV/AIDS will help develop some practical answers to this challenging question, and demonstrate the significant contribution that meaningful community involvement can make to a country’s response to HIV/AIDS.

 

  The Alliance in China