Together with Cosponsors and other partners, the Secretariat facilitates and coordinates support to countries, sub-national locations and cities, to ensure progress towards the achievement of Fast-Track targets. The Secretariat brokers, strengthens and leverages synergy and accountability between technical support mechanisms and providers of essential HIV services. Examples of Secretariat support to countries in 2017 included:

  • Technical support and guidance to implement Fast-Track in cities, outlining required actions to accelerate the HIV response.
  • Catalytic funding was provided to Botswana, Namibia, Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe to strengthen national prevention targets setting.
  • Capacity-building workshops were organized in East and Southern Africa and the Asia-Pacific regions, with joint interagency missions undertaken to gather information on systems and capacities for implementation.
  • Missions in Lesotho, Mozambique, Uganda and Zambia engaged key country stakeholders on national prevention strategy, management architecture, capacity and implementation, identifying key issues/gaps and making recommendations;
  • Guidance and support was provided in a meeting of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID condom landscaping study.
  • Assistance was provided to the condom need and gap analysis in Kenya, which informed the Global Fund concept note and supported training on Fast-Tracking combination prevention in the western and central Africa region.
  • The Secretariat participated in the International Advisory Group for the HPTN 071 PopART study on the impact of community provision of combination HIV prevention intervention in Zambia and South Africa.
  • A mapping of men’s and boy’s HIV policies and programmes in eastern and southern Africa region was conducted to discuss a way forward for the new voluntary medical male circumcision framework.
  • The Secretariat was selected for the Executive Committee of the Equal Rights Coalition that includes 35 Member States, civil society organizations and multilateral organizations.
  • Worked towards revitalization of the UNAIDS-European Union collaboration and organized a “EU day” in June with civil society organizations, ECDC, Members states on EU priorities on HIV and the expectations towards UNAIDS and the UN support;
  • For the country launch of the Global HIV Prevention Coalition and Prevention 2020 Road Map, the Secretariat continued to convene the Focal Points task force. Comprising Cosponsors, civil society organizations, the Global Fund, PEPFAR and the Gates Foundation, it established five multipartner working groups and produced a prevention scorecard – a rapid assessment tool to gather information on systems and capacities – to measure and track progress in priority Fast-Track countries, including on indicators for the five prevention pillars. It will be updated annually.

Find more details in the UBRAF Performance Monitoring Report.