Education Plus Initiative : UNAIDS Boss Reiterates End To Health Stigmas

The Executive Director of UNAIDS and Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations, Winnie Byanyima, has underscored the need for individuals to be free from all health stigmas and discrimination. She was speaking during an audience with the Minister of Public Health, Manaouda Malachie, yesterday July 19, 2023 in Yaounde. It was also a meeting which permitted the UNAIDS boss to discuss HIV financing in the country and a project to end AIDS in children. 
Focusing on the “Education Plus Initiative”, Winnie Byanyima said the approach jointly handled by UNAIDS, UNESCO, UNFPA, UNICEF and UN Women, as well as the Civil Society, the Heads of Government and Development Partners, is a high-level policy advocacy campaign in favour of holistic actions, multisectoral and reinforced investments to prevent HIV in adolescents and young women. The initiative is responding to the alarming number of adolescents and young women who contract HIV and die of AIDS in Sub-Sahara Africa, amongst other threats to their survival, wellbeing, human rights and fundamental liberties. The Education Plus Initiative is a right-based, gender-responsive action to ensure adolescent girls and young women have equal opportunities to access quality secondary education, alongside key education, health services and support for their economic autonomy and empowerment. It also challenges government decision-makers at the highest levels to model leadership and fulfil their essential duties to realize every girl’s rights to health and education.
The UNAIDS boss told the Minister of Public Health that with more finance from France, UNAIDS is seeking ways to establish the new initiative which will shape programmes to curb stigma and discrimination faced by people because of their health-related problems. Winnie Byanyima hoped Minister Manaouda will put in place a team which will closely work with her team in Cameroon so that coordinated efforts will establish better results while strengthening the health system. While acknowledging the country’s efforts in curbing HIV, Winnie Byanyima sai...