AEGiS-15IAC: [LbOrE35] BALANCING LOCAL OWNERSHIP WITH AN EMERGENCY RESPONSE TO AN HIV EPIDEMIC: A DIFFICULT BALANCE FOR DEVELOPMENT PARTNERS IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA

15th International AIDS Conference

Bangkok, Thailand — July 11-July 16, 2004

[LbOrE35] BALANCING LOCAL OWNERSHIP WITH AN EMERGENCY RESPONSE TO AN HIV EPIDEMIC: A DIFFICULT BALANCE FOR DEVELOPMENT PARTNERS IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Int Conf AIDS. 2004 Jul 11-16;15:Abstract No. LbOrE35

T Newbury
Government, Port Morebsy, Papua New Guinea

BACKGROUND: Development partners must balance the need to support local leadership of HIV/AIDS programs and building the capacities of govenment and communities with an emergency response to an HIV epidemic.

DESCRIPTION: The Australian Government is a major development partner in PNG providing up to 30% of health funding and over 90% of the HIV budget. A key principle is promoting national leadership and ownership of policy and programs. This has proven difficult in PNG. The Government of PNG (GoPNG) has demonstrated little political commitment and the bureaucracy, including the National AIDS Council Secretariat (NACS), is hampered by a lack of trained staff, no defined workprogram and monitoring framework and inadequate operational budgets.

AusAID's primary focus of supporting GoPNG to implement its Medium Term Plan (MTP) has limited our ability to respond to the emerging epidemic. For example we agreed to fund a wide public awareness campaign, when a more targtted program to vulnerable groups may have been more effective. Also, funding for community groups was delayed while a Government provincial framework was established.

LESSONS LEARNT: Promoting national leadership to the HIV epidemic cannot be at the expense of implementing emergency responses. Being a 'development partner' implies equality in decision making. Therefore development partners may need to 'drive the agenda' through active engagement in policy and technical issues. This can be done openly and frankly, but will only be successful when all partners in the response understand the HIV epidmic as well as each other's constraints and strengths.

RECOMMENDATIONS: AusAID is designing its next phase of support for HIV programs in PNG, with a move to program based assistance. We will undertake stronger advocacy with politicians and with key government agencies including Treasury and Personnel Management in order to support NACS. Our future work will be guided by research, including a gap analysis and international best practice.

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