Looking to the future: Moving from dual elimination of HIV and syphilis to triple elimination with hepatitis B

Overview

EN_061222_4 | Looking to the future: Moving from dual elimination of HIV and syphilis to triple elimination with hepatitis B from Get Done Lda on Vimeo.

Dr. Roland van de Ven, Technical Director of EGPAF-Tanzania shared his reaction to the session, where he presented lessons learned from Tanzania.

The focus was really on putting hepatitis B on the agenda, not only through the triple eMTCT, but more general focus on the disease burden. The session was opened by a powerful testimony from a Hep B patient from Tanzania, who shared his story how he struggled as a young adolescent man with the disease, in terms of access to treatment as well as the stigma he faced in the community and at school.

The flow of presentations was well designed and I could nicely tap on the testimony and the WHO general Hep B burden presentation, highlighting why triple eMTCT provide a great opportunity to address HBV. From the summary from the facilitator after my talk I think the message was well understood, that leveraging the HIV platform serves as a great opportunity, and can serves as an entry point to address HBV, but at the same time it does call for resource commitment. The development of the triple eMTCT plan is a great step in the right direction, showing how governments and partners work together to update plans and policies, but the actual operationalization calls for stronger commitment to make resources available. In that regard I highlighted an example that the dual elimination agenda so far had limited success. Adding a disease in the policy document does not necessarily suffice. Resources, demand creation and health systems need attention and committed investments to be able to truly leverage existing platforms.

(Presentation begins at 19:57)