15^th International AIDS conference: New grassroots organisation is set up to tackle AIDS

A new non-governmental organisation comprising people from communities affected by HIV and AIDS is being set up, challenging the top heavy structure of existing United Nations organisations such as UNAIDS, the joint programme on HIV and AIDS.

France's official “AIDS ambassador,” Mireille Guigaz, backs the concept, which is the idea of Jean-Louis Lamboray, who announced his resignation from UNAIDS last week (10 July, p 67). “The global organisation of the fight against HIV/AIDS has to change,” she told the first “knowledge fair” of communities affected by the epidemic, in Chiang Mai, Thailand, last week. The fair, which was organised by Dr Lamboray, brought together 130 communities from 32 countries.

Ms Guigaz said, “If we want to scale up the fight against HIV/AIDS, we have to be much more inclusive. We very much have to welcome communities, people affected by HIV/AIDS, and people from the field.”

The UN's system should be linked to the process, said Ms Guigaz, but she added, “The levels of action are so different, perhaps it would be better to be a little more autonomous. Let's be flexible. It's not a question of principle.”

But Keita Maria Diarra, AIDS coordinator at the Institut pour l'Education Populaire, Mali, who spoke to the BMJ at the same meeting, expressed a widespread concern. She said: “We also need macro-level partners for resources.”

Mr Lamboray spent this week at the AIDS 2004 meeting in Bangkok canvassing for partners and support. The new non-governmental organisation will be partnered, he hopes, by a relaunched AIDS competence programme, the 18 month old joint programme of UNAIDS and the UN Institute for Training and Research that he was leading until he decided UNAIDS wasn't moving fast enough.

The institute's director, Marcel Boisard, said that he certainly wished to continue the programme, provided that UNAIDS agreed and that a formal appraisal of the programme proved positive. The programme has lost not only Mr Lamboray but also its technical knowledge specialist, Geoff Parcel, who is returning to British Petroleum, from which he had been seconded.

The revitalised AIDS competence programme could be based at its previous home—the institute's “City AIDS” project, which Mr Boisard established with UNAIDS to tackle the problem of elected local officials having little say in their country's AIDS programmes.