REGIONAL TB/HIV CONCEPT NOTE IN THE EECA REGION WILL PROPOSE THE USE OF “CITY SERVICE MODELS”

Author:

Tinatin Zardiashvili

Article Number: 9

ABSTRACT Alliance Ukraine will submit a regional TB/HIV concept note in 2016 which will focus on providing services to key affected populations in Eastern Europe and Central Asia using a “city service model” developed in Western Europe.

The International HIV/AIDS Alliance in Ukraine has received approval to submit a regional TB/HIV concept note in 2016. The concept note will focus on providing services to key affected populations in Eastern Europe and Central Asia using a “city service model” pioneered in Western Europe.

The Alliance had submitted an expression of interest earlier this year. The concept note is due on 1 February 2016. Alliance Ukraine will act as principal recipient and will work in partnership with Contact Network (Switzerland) and AIDS Foundation East-West (Netherlands).

The Global Fund has told the Alliance that the ceiling for the concept note is $7.5 million. The project is expected to start in July 2016, and last for three years.

The proposal to use the city service model is based on the idea that municipalities have to deal with high-burden epidemics and that more and more authority is being decentralized to the municipal level, including in the EECA. The model will be further defined in the concept note.

Between now and the end of this year, Alliance Ukraine will seek input on the development of the concept note from regional stakeholders. The first meeting of the regional dialogue has been already held (in Kyiv, Ukraine on 5-6 October.)

Andrey Klepikov, executive director of the Alliance Ukraine told GFO: “Thinking about future, we see big cities are the point of growth with increasing risks to HIV and TB epidemics. This is why our initiative builds municipal responses to HIV and TB with special focus on key populations. We plan to apply a dovetailed approach by using elements of IT technologies, public health and fundraising. We aim at enabling cities to take over the control of infections.”