Strategic Aim 3
Responses to SRH&R and HIV and AIDS are integrated and linked to better meet the needs of poor, vulnerable and marginalised people and increase aid effectiveness
Rationale
The root causes of poor SRH&R and HIV and AIDS are clearly intimately related and have common drivers: poverty, gender inequity, marginalisation and stigma, discrimination and denial. Despite widespread international recognition of the benefits to be gained from greater integration and linkage, the responses to poor SRH&R and HIV and AIDS remain the same at every level: community, service delivery, policy and planning, strategy, financing and global aid architecture.
However, “integrating” should not be made at the expense of recognising the unique challenges posed by the AIDS epidemic. Interact Worldwide seeks to develop locally adapted solutions that will be tailored to both SRH & HIV situations and health systems in place, looking at the best and most functional match between the two.
Interact Worldwide works with partners to identify and realise synergy in responses to SRH&R and HIV and AIDS at every level. We support the development and scale up of integrated and linked solutions in order to better meet peoples’ needs, more efficiently deploy resources, and promote equitable, long-term, sustainable human development.
INTERACT WORLDWIDE: MALAWI Although our programmes have mostly involved HIV&AIDS partners (except from the BLM project, now completed), we endeavour to look at the vulnerability factors within the broader context of SRH in Malawi. This is the particular focus of our new (July 08) project “Manga (to build or develop) Manaso, Manga Malawi” (DFID) with MANASO, which aims at improved SRH seeking behaviour of marginalised young people, sex workers (SW), prisoners and juvenile offenders through RBA. The project works on improving the capacity of MANASO in broader SRH issues as they affect people living with HIV It also targets the organisational and technical effectiveness of MANASO in order that it can fulfil its designated role in national frameworks and policy as the civil society co-ordinating network in HIV&AIDS at the decentralised and national levels, also promoting its role in other SRH fora |