WELCOME REMARKS at the RETA 6321 Situation Analysis Report for Component 1
Astoria Plaza, 10 January 2008

Dr. Yolanda Oliveros
Director, National Center for Disease Prevention and Control, DOH

Ms. Barbara Lochmann
Social Sector Specialist, ADB

Dr. Vicente Salas
Team Leader, PRIMEX

Distinguished Guests, Friends, Ladies and Gentlemen:

On behalf of Action for Health Initiatives (ACHIEVE) and Remedios AIDS Foundation (RAF), our two NGO associates, it is my pleasure to welcome you to this Participatory Planning Workshop  for Component 1 of the ADB Regional Technical Assistance for Fighting HIV/AIDS in Asia and the Pacific – Subproject 5: Strengthening Country Response to HIV/AIDS among High-Risk Groups (otherwise known as RETA 6321).

I wish to acknowledge the presence of Assistant Secretary Belen Matibag of the Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) as well as the representatives of the different donor organizations working in the HIV and AIDS sector: Mr. Fabio Mesquita and Dr. Mads Salva of WHO, Mr. Peter Mosende, Country Coordinator OIC of UNAIDS, Mr. Jimmy Loro of AusAID, Ms. Meredith Gaffney of USAID, and of course, Ms Emi Masaki of ADB who developed this TA and was with us during its inception phase. We also wish to welcome our partners from Zamboanga City, Cebu City, and General Santos City, and others from the public sector (DOH, PNAC, DDB, PDEA, NSCB) and the NGO community. We are very happy that you could make time to join our workshop today and share your views, insights, and comments on our Situation Analysis Report for Component 1.

As you may be aware, this Project commenced in June 2007 and is to end in November this year. A number of you were, in fact, present at our Inception Workshop held at this same hotel on 2 July 2007. This project is actually Subproject No. 5 of RETA 6321, which has 11 subprojects. Its aim is to improve the effectiveness of the national and local response to the HIV and AIDS epidemic among intravenous drug users (IDUs) (under Component 1) and overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) (under Component 2) and provide support to DOH in developing more feasible approaches and/or interventions for these groups at risk.

This Workshop is the second in a series of national consultations under this Project, and is intended to present the highlights of our Team’s findings from their analysis of the HIV/AIDS and IDU situation, and seek your views and insights on the priority issues which our Team identified in the course of their situation analysis. Dr. Vic Salas, our Team Leader, will tell you more about the objectives and expected outputs of this Workshop in a later session, after which Dr Jojo Sescon, our Deputy Team Leader for Component 1, and Dr. Ofie Saniel, our Epidemiologist, will present the highlights of our Situation Analysis Report (SAR), the executive summary of which is in your workshop kits.

We are very happy to be have been given this opportunity to lead in the conduct of a comprehensive review and assessment of the HIV and IDU situation in the Philippines, which I understand is the first time this has been done. We thank DOH and the other agencies and NGOs which provided our Team with the inputs, data, and information for our situation analysis report – without which we could not have come up with such a report.
We are confident that we will have a very productive Workshop, especially with all of you here, and thank you again for making time to be with us today.

Mabuhay at Magandang umaga sa inyong lahat!