Africans Getting Involved = greater meaningful involvement of Africans living with HIV and AIDS.

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details of African Sexual Health Fair on 14th October 2006

Africans Getting Involved wants to bridge the gap between the grassroots and policy makers through greater meaningful involvement of Africans living with HIV and AIDS. There are numerous examples where the NHS and African voluntary organisations providing services to them fail to listen to their concerns and fail to provide any mechanisms that encourage their involvement, using confidentiality as a means to control them as “service users” rather than support them to drive the way that services are delivered.

“Africans Getting Involved” is a group that formed at the Changing Tomorrow conference in September 2004 where it was so good to see Africans there in numbers, particularly a high proportion of men who were visible and taking part.

After an initial informal gathering it was realised that there were serious concerns being raised by Africans on a whole raft of issues affecting them and/or their families. Time and space was made available for two additional caucus meetings for Africans during the already hectic conference timetable. These were well attended and resulted in agreement to hold further meetings to formulate a plan to start to address issues of health inequality, access to treatment, patient and public involvement in the NHS, user involvement in HIV service organisations, and to encourage others to engage with health and political systems in order to improve the health and well being of Africans living with HIV infection.

A big factor in most discussions is migration, in particular the deportation of Africans with HIV who are receiving treatment in this country and are repatriated to certain death from AIDS in countries where access to Anti Retrovirals is not available to ordinary people.

At their meeting on 30 October 2004, the group formally asked UKC to provide organisational and logistical support to them in order that their energy and enthusiasm could be directed at what they wanted to do rather than on the time consuming task of setting up a new and separate organisation (of which there are already more than enough in the London’s HIV sector where a balance needs to be struck between “choice” and duplication of effort).

UKC has supported a number of Africans Getting Involved meetings in London attended by people from London and much further afield. Africans Getting Involved were engaged on a consultation on the draft London HIV Strategy, primarily as a means to engage them with the development of public policy and shaping of service delivery by the NHS, and also to gauge and improve the level of skill of participants who were predominantly unaware of how the NHS strategically plans, commissions, monitors and delivers specialised services. A number of changes that reflect their input appear in the final strategy published by the London Specialised Commissioning Group in February 2005.

Over the course of a number of meetings, the group has been able to vocalise and record the issues that are concerning them, attempt to prioritise them, and has taken some actions as a group. First of these was to attend the English Speaking Union debate on compulsory HIV testing of all immigrants, make presentations to the Oxford Students Union Stop AIDS Campaign, and the Shaping Tomorrow conference organised by the Terrence Higgins Trust and George House Trust in Manchester. Some members also attended the retrial of Mohammed Dica, a Somalian asylum seeker who had been convicted of so-called “biological” grievous bodily harm.

On 17 March 2005, group members received an up to the minute briefing on legal issues after the Court of Appeal judgment in the case of Feston Konzani whose conviction for "reckless" HIV transmission was upheald.

If you are interested in joining Africans Getting Involved contact Edith Kaggwa or George Rwamakuba at UKC by email, or phone on 020 7564 2180

Read Positive Nation coverage of this group here
Read coverage from the African HIV Policy Network Newsletter here