Building Partnership Relations with National AIDS Center and Other Stakeholders in Azerbaijan

Cross Border Cooperation for HIV/AIDS Prevention and Impact Mitigation in Southern Caucasus and Russian Federation Project Local Partner in Azerbaijan is working closely with the National AIDS Center and its regional offices to improve the accessibility of prevention, care and treatment services to project target Most-at-Risk Populations.
During the community mobilization activities 5 active individuals have been identified, who are willing to work as peer educators within the communities in order to disseminate information on safe behavior and methods of HIV prevention. Additionally, in Baku 3 regions – Lenkeran, Sumgait and Shirvan were covered during the project interventions.
Project team is regularly communicating with the Head of National AIDS center, who is one of the key decision makers and point persons in the field of HIV prevention. National AIDS Center is involved in the design of project visibility materials and other activities as well. As a result of fruitful cooperation, national referral mechanism, including accessibility to National AIDS Center and various NGOs offering testing, care and treatment services to HIV affected individuals, has been enhanced.
In the month of July, 2012 the joint meeting was organized by UNAIDS and GFATM Project Implementation Unit (PIU) including all key stakeholders in order to discuss several policies related to HIV service quality and accessibility on country level. Project Local Partner representative was present at the meetings and made a presentation on the experience of PUAA and generally role of NGOs and GOs (UN agencies, MoH, GFATM PIU, CCM, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Labour and Social Protection, etc) in enhancing referral mechanism on care and support services to MARPs. The discussion was initiated on the needs of the target groups, existing problems and possible solutions. The key outcome of this meeting was establishing efficient cooperative relationships with a number of GOs and NGOs, willing to collaborate to improve the country level prevention, care and treatment services for the populations at-risk.