Six Caribbean countries – Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Montserrat, and St. Kitts and Nevis will receive validation from the World Health Organization (WHO) for having eliminated mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis.
Experts from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, UNAIDS, PANCAP/CARICOM and the Regional Validation Committee will announce this achievement and describe efforts made to reach it, in addition to progress at the regional level during a ceremony in Basseterre.
Participants will include health ministers and other high-level officials from the honoured islands.
After Cuba in 2015, this group of six countries and territories are the second in the Region of the Americas to receive this recognition. Until now, only two other countries in the world, Thailand and Belarus, have received WHO validation for dual elimination, while Armenia and the Republic of Moldova achieved global elimination goals for mother-to-child transmission of HIV, and syphilis, respectively.
The ceremony will take place at 4:00 p.m. EST Time in St. Kitts Marriot Resort and will be transmitted live on livestream.com/pahotv/EMTCT
The validation ceremony coincides with a new report from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Regional Office for the Americas of WHO, and UNAIDS that says expanding access to all HIV prevention options that are now available would reduce the number of new cases of HIV in Latin America and the Caribbean, which since 2010 has remained at 120,000 every year
