Youth involvement in universal access

Well after going over the readings, I was rather surprised to find out that the youth contribute as much to the newly cases of incidence as to what was mentioned in the readings. The fact that young people make up almost half (45 %) of newly infected cases is striking and only underlines the importance of addressing that age range as a corner partner in countering the epidemic, halting its progression and even turn it around.

The articles also stressed on the importance of community mobilization and participation, a deeply rooted conviction in any public health paradigm. Effective interventions that are able to guarantee universal access to youths in prevention, treatment and care and support, are based on open accessibility and awareness to seek and use such initiatives. This can be ensured by incorporating youths in the design, planning, implementation and the evaluation of such interventions. Youths in general and those living with HIV can provide an insight on what it really mean to be a youth and how is vulnerability is translated from policy to reality.

Youth-supported universal access to;

• Prevention; by restating issues of vulnerability to the use of common language and communication in order to enhancing the dissemination of information necessary to prevent young people from engaging in risky behaviors and the provision of comprehensive information on HIV prevention.
• Treatment; by encouraging a culture of status awareness and stigma alleviation to allow voluntary testing and status recognition as well as seeking treatment and abiding to it.
• Care and support; by establishing and enabling environment that allows for people living with HIV to adapt to their demanding lifestyle as well as to provide the needed support in terms of therapy, nutrition and other basic needs, palliative care, psycho-social support and other valuable services.

Yet, it was not until the turn of the millennium that the youths started to take more active roles in the discussions on HIV/AIDS. I found the contribution of the youthforce as a very interesting step (and a courageous ones as well). To “invade” a conference and turn the attention to them, well that’s just brilliant. Moreover, the essence of the movement says most of it. If we want universal access then we are talking about synergy and collectivity of efforts. Youthforce is just that, bringing forth all the little contributors here and there into one big uniform force of change. It just has to work out.

In the totality of this part, I have learned that youths play a really important role in completing the response for HIV. As a pillar for this response, the involvement of youths will allow the global effort to access new territories and populations and draw forth more contribution and interaction between the providers, receivers and all that lies along that spectrum. Young people can define what HIV means to them and to guide the design of proper interventions. They can provide the intervention to where and whom it was not provided previously of their peers as well as to translate that intervention to the proper language and in thus guiding the implementation process. And finally they can redefine the outcomes of such interventions to evaluate the efforts more properly and in thus they guide the correction process and set the proper learned lessons to those concerned.

Young people are an essential resource in the struggle to counter the HIV epidemic. Understanding this resource and nurturing it to full force and contribution are ideal measure to maximize efficiency and inclusion of the different stakeholders.

(anticipate picture when I get my cam back)