Publications

Microbes do not stop at national borders, so an infectious disease threat anywhere is a threat everywhere. Making our world safer from epidemics means strengthening the capacity of countries to prevent, detect and respond effectively to current and emerging health threats.

Robust health systems are not only essential to ending HIV, TB and malaria as epidemics, they yield broader health outcomes, delivering health services in a sustainable, equitable and effective way. Resilient and sustainable systems for health are necessary for accelerating progress toward universal health coverage, and help countries prepare for emerging threats to global health security.

India is a strategic partner of the Global Fund, both as an implementer and a donor. The government of India has shown great leadership in improving the health needs of its citizens and fighting infectious diseases, especially tuberculosis. India has ambitious goals for all three diseases, including ending TB by 2025 – five years ahead of the Sustainable Development Goals. Since 2002, the Global Fund has disbursed US$2.1 billion in programs to fight HIV, TB and malaria and strengthen health systems in India.

The Global Fund is partnering with governments, medical experts, advocates, civil society and communities affected by HIV, TB and malaria to fight the three diseases and build resilient and sustainable systems for health. As of May 2019, the Global Fund partnership has invested a total of US$366 million in 14 island countries in the Pacific region.

Drug-resistant TB is part of the growing challenge of antimicrobial-resistant superbugs that do not respond to existing medications, resulting in fewer treatment options and increasing mortality rates for illnesses that would ordinarily be curable – including TB. Global development partners must move faster to contain this threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) before it escalates to claim millions of lives around the world.

The Hong Kong STD/AIDS update is a composite report on HIV/AIDS reporting and STI caseload statistics published 3 monthly. The current issue has the updated information up to March 2019.

Asia and the Pacific boasts some of the earliest successes in responding to the HIV epidemic. The region’s response, however, is highly uneven, and several national HIV programmes are not keeping pace with their growing HIV epidemics. Creeping complacency in other countries risks squandering gains made thus far.

The workshop drew expertise from across the region, as well as from the Fenway Institute. Session topics ranged from introductions to terminology around gender identity and health issues faced by transgender community, to more advanced topics such as gender affirmative hormone therapy and gender affirming surgeries. The workshop also highlighted four unique models that have successfully integrated HIV programming in health service delivery for transgender people: the transgender community health clinic in a public health facility in Thailand, the standalone transgender community health center in the Philippines, the key populations-owned private clinic in Vietnam, and the private sexual health clinic in Indonesia.

Without universal access to quality health care, millions of people die unnecessarily every year, and preventable diseases including AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria continue to ravage families and communities. To achieve the Sustainable Development Goal 3 of greater health and well-being for all, we must both end the epidemics and build stronger systems for health that can deliver universal health coverage.

This review examined the human rights-related barriers to health services of key and vulnerable populations in the HIV and TB epidemics in Indonesia.