Bring the World with a Just and Fair Care

HIV/AIDS Coordinating Committee (HACC) is a strong HIV/AIDS NGOs network with the capacity to build strategic partnership with all players for an efficient, effective and sustainable response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic and its impact in Cambodia. Recently, HACC is supported from over 120 members to play an important role in facilitating, coordinating and sharing experiences, best practices and information as strategic information among civil society organizations in response to HIV and AIDS in Cambodia. A key conclusion of the 2007 Consensus Workshop on HIV Estimates and Projections is that prevalence in the general population has declined and will stabilize if interventions are sustained. The main risk of a second-wave of HIV infection occurring in Cambodia (i.e. significantly increased HIV incidence) is from female sex workers (SW), their clients and sweethearts. Men who have Sex with Men (MSM) and Drug Users (DU) may also be potentially significant contributors to any second-wave of HIV infections. Populations that may be especially vulnerable to HIV infection are female partners of high-risk males, mobile populations and urban and out-of-school youth. Firstly, it cannot be assumed that incidence will remain low. Changes in the structure of the commercial sex industry and the difficulty of sustaining prevention programs in brothels where there is a high turnover of sex workers, along with the possibility of significant epidemics among MSM and IDU/DU, mean that sustaining and improving prevention efforts to maintain the reduction in HIV incidence will need to attract high priority. Secondly, the maturing of the Cambodian epidemic means that there are a growing number of PLHIV in need of ART. Delivering on the commitment to provide long-term Universal Access to ART and associated care and support will need to be a continuing high priority. Thirdly, the high AIDS mortality rate has resulted in many orphans and widows. Finally, PLHIV, especially those with advanced stage HIV, have high social and economic support needs. Key constraints and threats to the effectiveness of the response are; financial contribution from Government is very limited just over 10% of annual HIV expenditures, resulting in dependence on donors and funding from USAID, US CDC and the Global Fund (more than 80% of total financial resources); the lack of an effective resource tracking system; organizational capacity and technical skills in some ministries and some NGOs are weak due to lack of strategic information, effective coordination, implementation of law, policies and guideline and the quality of many programs needs strengthening. The key opportunities that need to be addressed are; scaling up of prevention programs for MARPs included MSM, IDU/DU and SW. Developing organizational and technical capacity in key ministries and NGOs/CBOs; rational and effective use of technical support to address capacity gaps in priority areas to ensure improved and efficient absorption of resources; development of resource tracking systems, priority setting and alignment of resource allocation to priorities; an emphasis on quality improvement for all program areas; improving governance and coordination; and better use of strategic information. Capacity building of civil society organization in response to HIV/AIDS it seems increased in term of program management, institutional development, financial management, Monitoring and Evaluation and procurement. Anyhow, due to annual information rate, high staff turnover for good environment and better pay, some civil society organizations are still facing difficulty in maintaining a good staff, lack of capacity in mobilizing the resources, challenging with the organizational development and the lack of strategic information in order to move organization to the right track and also alight with the national strategic plan. In other word, based on the assessment of civil society participations in the national response organized by HACC found that the level of participation from the civil society is in level 2 of influence, it means the participation of civil society is still needed to be improved, especially in the level of law and policy development. The voice of civil society organization, particularly the voice from the community people is needed to be addressed and solved based on the priority needs of those populations for sustainable response. The main reason of this project is to build the capacity of civil society organization in the national response by providing a platform for the CSO to share and learn from each other all best practices and using the strategic information to incorporate with their project or program in alight with the national program. There are two innovative approaches within this project such as six main technical working group established, the use of mass media for HIV prevention and sufficient use of research findings to inform the development of mass media, tailoring to local evidence on patterns of behavior and related believed through high-technology HIV/AIDS Campaign and actively strategic information sharing among HACC members and relevant stakeholders through e-forums, website, key correspondent team and other electronic sharing. To success within this project, HACC have proposed for 3 objectives are as followed; To promote information sharing and best practices and coordination on HIV/AIDS responses amongst civil society and other stakeholders To promote positive environment and collective dialog for influencing policy and decision making for effective HIV/AIDS responses The support for the HACC will be directly reached the target audiences and communities who really need the funding assistance.