Official UNAIDS statistics tell us close to 200,000 people currently live with HIV/AIDS in Central America. However, local organizations say the actual numbers are double or closer to 400,000 people.
The HIV/AIDS epidemic in Mesoamerica is serious and spreading at an alarming rate. Widespread poverty, gender inequity, early initiation of se
xual activity, a machismo culture, and the stigma against people living with HIV/AIDS are greatly responsible. There is a lack of basic health access and education services and HIV/AIDS treatment is limited.
xual activity, a machismo culture, and the stigma against people living with HIV/AIDS are greatly responsible. There is a lack of basic health access and education services and HIV/AIDS treatment is limited.The enormous impact of the epidemic is clear in the case of Honduras, where HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of death for Honduran women.
What’s Horizons Doing?
In 2008, Horizons and our partner Humanitas launched an innovative project on HIV/AIDS that supports a more robust insertion of civil society organizations at a regional level in the prevention and treatment of HIV and AIDS. The Central American HIV Observatory is based in Costa Rica (with sub-centres in Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala) and its main focus is to strengthen the capacities of civil society organizations to ensure that the governments of the region assume their responsibilities related to public health and citizen welfare.
The HIV Observatory is serving as a channel for training and information sharing between existent organizations and networks, and has three main components: 1) a citizen observatory to monitor the extent to which the states of the region are complying with the international commitments they have made; 2) research and dissemination of information which highlights regional characteristics of the HIV/AIDS epidemic while taking into account diversity and 3) documentation and dissemination of best practice models of HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment.
Through this regional initiative, civil society organizations in Mesoamerica are coming together to effectively combat HIV/AIDS and to press governments to assume their responsibility for public health which will help prevent further spread of the disease.
