Advisory Group on HIV/AIDS and Maternal, Newborn and Child Health

Activities of Committees and other bodies
Advisory Group on HIV/AIDS and Maternal, Newborn
and Child Health

The IPU Advisory Group met on 19 March with seven out of ten members in attendance. It was pleased to have been joined by technical partners from the World Health Organization (WHO), the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis. The Group elected its new president, Mr. Faustine Ndgulile, Member of Parliament for Tanzania.

The Advisory Group discussed its future areas of engagement, strategic priorities and opportunities, focusing on areas in which the IPU could make a strong impact. The Group agreed to consider revising its mandate so that it could continue to provide strong support to the IPU’s work on health.

The Group’s vision for health was that no one should be left behind and that everyone everywhere should have access to quality services without fear of harm or discrimination. In order to achieve that goal, it should to continue to focus on the most vulnerable and marginalized populations, namely women, children and adolescents, and also men who had sex with men, sex workers and intravenous drug users.

Its priority would be to advocate for strengthened and evidence-based legislation, better oversight of implementation of that legislation, particularly in regard to the most vulnerable, and associated resource mobilization. The Group would work to further strengthen the commitment of parliamentarians everywhere to deal with such issues, including those that were sometimes politically sensitive. It would work to equip and encourage members of parliament to engage their communities and citizens in their efforts, particularly those seeking to end harmful and discriminatory practices like child marriage and female genital mutilation.

The members of the Advisory Group were fully committed to the task but required the support of all IPU members in taking forward that ambitious vision. In 2012, the IPU Assembly had adopted a landmark resolution on “Access to health as a basic right: The role of parliaments in addressing key challenges to securing the health of women and children” that had since inspired many parliamentarians to take action in their countries. The Advisory Group would look at that resolution and propose an addendum to the Governing Council with a view to strengthening the text further and aligning it with the Sustainable Development Goals.

In addition to the meeting, the Advisory Group held two activities during the Assembly to engage IPU members in its important work. On 20 March it had held a side event on Preventing child and forced marriage: Making the global health goals a reality for girls that it had been pleased to organize jointly with WHO and the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health. The event had shown that practices like child marriage remained an obstacle to the full achievement of better health for adolescents and children, including increasingly in developed countries. The Group had been pleased at the very strong commitment shown from so many countries towards ending that harmful practice.

On 21 March, in partnership with UNAIDS, the Group had visited health facilities that provided services to women living with HIV. The prevalence of HIV in Zambia stood at 13.6 per cent and the epidemic continued to ravage the country and many others in the region. Access to life-saving treatment in sub-Saharan Africa remained out of reach for more than 50 per cent of people living with HIV, with women and children particularly affected. Lusaka was one of 13 cities in the world fast-tracking access to HIV treatment, and the Group had been honoured to meet so many children born free of the virus to HIV-positive mothers. An AIDS-free world was within reach and the role of parliamentarians was to make that goal a reality for all. The Advisory Group looked forward to working with all IPU members to realize that vision.