On February 1, 2008 a regular meeting of Partnership Forum was held in Moscow. Representatives of international and nongovernmental organizations working in the area of HIV/AIDS in RF took part in it.

The meeting was devoted to the theme of “HIV and Youth”. The decision to hold a thematic meeting was made in response to the survey “How to Improve Organization of the Forum Work?” conducted among Forum participants. Besides, a decision to form small working groups in specific thematic areas was made.

Latest research in the area of HIV, children and youth as well as reports on prevention and treatment programmes were presented.

Tigran Yepoyan, UNICEF and leading specialists of The Institute of Family Health, Anna Karpushkina and Natalia Vartapetova made presentations on PMTCT. They highlighted the experience of international collaboration in this area and presented “Researching Provision of Medical Assistance to HIV Positive Women During Pregnancy and Delivery in Eight Regions of Russian Federation.” In the course of this research over 500 women were interviewed and 2500 cases on delivery and abortion were studied in such regions and areas as Perm, Tumen, Orenburg, Irkutsk, Murmansk, Khabarovsk, Altay and Krasnoyarsk. The authors paid special attention to methods of family planning for HIV positive women.

Olesya Kochkina, UNFPA project coordinator, presented international “Peer to Peer Youth Network”. 5000 youth teams are working in 34 countries worldwide in the framework of this project. There are already 30 such teams working in Russia. The project makes provision for active_en youth involvement in prevention of HIV spread. Besides, in the framework of project “Expansion of HIV Prevention Among Youth in Russian Federation” a Youth Council has been formed and is currently operating. Participants of the meeting discussed possible ways of future work of the Council and ways of its integration in other programmes.

Findings of research on HIV among street children and youth in St. Petersburg were presented. The key way of HIV transmission in this environment is injecting drug use. The group remains hard to be accessed for research and provision of access to treatment.

Partnership Forum participants had an opportunity to become familiar with the process of preparation to the second EECAAC conference which will take place in Moscow on May 3-5 2008. Maria Ivannikova, representative of the Conference Secretariat presented detailed information on participants registration, planned satellites and exhibitions.

The participants also listened to the report on the work of the First All Russian conference “Civil Society in Response to HIV/AIDS in RF: Successes, Challenges, Perspectives” which was held in Moscow in January 2008.

Partnership Forum participants took an active_en part in discussion of raised issues and supported forming small working groups. Nest Partnership Forum meeting is planned for the next quarter 2008.

All presentations made at Partnership Forum meeting are available on the website in Partnership Forum section.