“More Talk, More Acton”

The 10th SAC was held on Saturday, 3 December 2016, at the NUHS Tower Block.

The theme this year was “More Talk. More Action”.

The 10th SAC provided a forum for healthcare and public health experts, community and other stakeholders to share, discuss and propose solutions to stop the spread of HIV,  address HIV-related stigma and discrimination, and strengthen care for PLHIV in Singapore.

The programme was organized into facilitated discussion sessions where each session produced actionable recommendations.  As hoped the discussion format encouraged panelists and delegates to come up with  solutions for a more effective and coordinated HIV programme in Singapore.

The Guest of Honor was Dr Amy Khor, Senior Minister of State, Ministry of Health and Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources. The keynote speaker was Mr Steve Kraus, Director of the UNAIDS Regional Support Team for Asia and the Pacific who addressed the topic  “Fast tracking the HIV response: Ending AIDS by 2030”.

The conference was organized into 3 sessions.

Plenary: Achieving 90-90-90

The plenary  session covered strategies and discussion around attaining the UNAIDS’ global targets of 90-90-90 by 2020 whereby:

  • 90% of all people living with HIV know their HIV status.
  • 90% of all people diagnosed with HIV are on ART.
  • 90% of all people receiving ART have achieved viral suppression.

This was followed by 2 parallel session in the afternoon that focused on:

 Interventions to address rising HIV infections among MSM

A large part of this session focused on growing HIV infection rates among the MSM population in Asia including Singapore. Against this backdrop and the morning session there was lively discussion on PrEP as a key strategy to address HIV prevention among high risk MSM alongside other existing prevention strategies as recommended by WHO and UNAIDS. Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) consists of use of HIV medication that is used to treat the virus in HIV negative persons to prevent HIV infection.

Prevention Strategies for Heterosexual Males

The session covered research and prevention programmes for high risk heterosexual males and strategies to increase the uptake of HIV testing among this population.

More details will follow on the individual presentations from the sessions on the AfA website.