The newly appointed UNAIDS Country Coordinator  (UCC) for Sierra Leone, Dr. Job Sagbohan  accompanied by members of the Country Team made a familiarization visit to the National AIDS Secretariat on Wednesday 15^th August 2012  to get first hand information on the national HIV response.

The Team was received by Dr. Brima Kargbo and Heads of Unit of the secretariat.

In his introductory statement, the UCC gave a brief background of his working experience with in the United Nations in the area of monitoring and evaluation and that Sierra Leone was his first appointment as UNAIDS Country Coordinator  which he believed could be a learning process and appealed for greater support from all stakeholders to make his work fruitful.

In his welcoming statement, Dr. Kargbo gave a brief backdrop on the role of NAS; as coordinating entity for multi-sectoral response to HIV and AIDS in Sierra Leone since 2002. He informed the UCC that the epidemic has stabilized with decline prevalence among pregnant women, and alluded that another DHS will be conducted in 2013 to ascertain the epidemic.

He underscored UNAIDS’ technical and financial support to the national response over the past seven years, and in anticipation that UCC’s experience in working with the United Nations and especially monitoring epidemic, will strengthen the successes of the country.   He assured him of the Secretariat’s open door initiative for continued cooperation with UNAIDS.

However, he noted two key challenges for UNAIDS’ response (i) collection of reliable data from Implementing Partners  (ii) Miscalculation in the Global Fund proposal for number of people on ART.

The Heads of Unit explained the functions of the various Units in the Secretariat; noting UNAIDS’ support to specific activities and challenges.  The following suggestions were put forward to the UCC for consideration during his tenure of office:

• Capacity enhancement for staff at national and regional levels
• Improvement  in  data quality and timely reporting
• Proper coordination of HIV and AIDS information
• Integration of LMIS into the National Health Information System
• Development of  M&E Toolkits for data analysis
• Provision of HIV and AIDS information materials for Libraries

In his response, Dr. Sagbohan commended NAS team for the tremendous strides made in the national response and promised to work on the platform established by his predecessors to fulfill the UNAIDS mandate.  He noted the current challenges of UNAIDS (transitional management restructure and review of country profiling) and the need to have value for money.

UNAIDS Team meeting with NAS staf

He underscored ‘partnership’ and ‘collaboration’ as key strategies to address HIV and congratulated Sierra Leoneans for their hard work, which had made the country an icon for best practices in HIV response.  Thus, nominated as second country to the UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board.

He assured members of UNAIDS’ support to fast track the process for Global Fund continued funding, maintain advocacy for HIV at high level in the national agenda to address challenges, as well as  improve on UNAIDS achievements at country level.

Dr. Job Sagbohan left and Dr Kargbo right