UNAIDS: The First 10 Years

UNAIDS The First 10 Years232the escalating AIDS crisis 8 . A National AIDS Control Programme, established in 1989,focused mainly on blood safety and the management of sexually transmitted infections.Despite UN efforts to widen the scope of the AIDS response, the narrow, biomedicalapproach predominated in those early years.In 1994, President Banda conceded power, and the first multiparty elections were heldin that year. Freedom of speech was re-established and political prisoners were released 9 .It is relevant that UNAIDS arrived in Lilongwe shortly after the emergence of Malawi’snew democracy, as both the nascent democracy and the respond to AIDS would bemutually reinforcing, helping to promote a culture of openness, societal self-reflectionand increasing civic awareness and engagement.When the new President, Bakili Muluzi, took office in 1994, he publicly acknowledgedthat the population was subject to a severe AIDS epidemic and emphasized the needfor a unified response to the crisis 10 . Indeed, the narrow biomedical approach initiallyadopted by the National AIDS Control Programme had proved to be an ineffectiveweapon against the deep-rooted cultural and societal drivers of the disease. By the timethe first UNAIDS Country Programme Adviser (CPA), Angela Trenton-Mbonde, hadarrived in Lilongwe in 1996, the silent virus and the stigma surrounding it had alreadytaken their toll. That same year, the National AIDS Control Programme carried out anevaluation showing that although community awareness reached about 90%, behaviourchange was limited, and HIV continued to spread 11 .Mobilizing partners to join in the response to AIDS …Trenton-Mbonde remembered that “… the Joint Programme’s first major challengewas to secure the commitment of all the UN agencies to address AIDS in all of theirprogrammes and to meet in the UN Theme Group on HIV/AIDS to discuss progress” 12 .The UN Theme Group on AIDS was initially created to coordinate UN action on AIDSin country, but soon there was to be a shift in thinking about the role of the UN: theResident Coordinator, Terence Jones, pushed for UNAIDS’ role in coordination beyondthe UN, helping to position UNAIDS as ‘an honest broker’ in the AIDS arena generally 13 .In order to mobilize and coordinate a wide variety of partners, UNAIDS first set upan expanded UN Technical Working Group on HIV and AIDS, which soon becamethe national coordination forum for AIDS. To promote Malawian ownership of theAIDS response, the forum was co-chaired by the Head of the National AIDS ControlProgramme.8Ibid.9Ibid.10Ibid.11Ibid.12Ibid.13Ibid.