WHAT: A press conference in which the World Health Organization (WHO) will announce that Cuba is the world’s first country to receive validation of having eliminated mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis. Experts from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO/WHO), UNICEF, UNAIDS and the Regional Validation Committee, together with Minister of Public Health of Cuba Roberto Morales Ojeda, will announce the achievement and describe the efforts that led to it and similar progress at the regional level.
WHEN: Tuesday, 30 June 2015
TIME: 10:00 am (EDT/ Washington, DC, time)
WHERE: Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) headquarters, 525 23rd St. N.W., corner of Virginia Ave., N.W. Room B
VIRTUAL via LIVESTREAM
Follow this link or copy and paste it in a new browser:
WHO:
Carissa F. Etienne, Director, PAHO/WHO
Roberto Morales Ojeda, Minister of Public Health of Cuba
Luiz Loures, Deputy Executive Director, UNAIDS
Mickey Chopra, Chief of Health and Associate Director of Programs, UNICEF
Adele Benzaken, Co-President of the Regional Validation Committee
Q&A: Journalists may submit their questions via Livestream chat or by email to mediateam@paho.org. Following the press conference, a panel of experts will discuss Cuba’s achievement and related efforts in other countries.
CONTEXT: Mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis is almost entirely preventable. In recent years, WHO and PAHO have made considerable efforts to ensure that women with HIV receive the treatment they need to stay well and to prevent their babies from being born with HIV or syphilis.
Cuba is the first country in the world to request that WHO validate its elimination of mother-to-child (“vertical”) transmission of HIV and syphilis. The validation process included, among other steps, the preparation of a national report and the visit to Cuba of a regional committee of independent experts convened by PAHO, which presented its report to a WHO global committee. The global committee met last week to analyze that report.
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