UNASO hosts 2nd Annual Women’s Summit

18 Oct UNASO hosts 2nd Annual Women’s Summit

On the 7^th and 8^th of July 2022, UNASO hosted the 2^nd annual Women’s Summit at Fairway Hotel in Kampala to update stakeholders on the status of new female-centered HIV prevention tools in Uganda, for participants to come up with collaborative actions that can be implemented at national and international level on SRHR, GBV and HIV prevention and to learn from the experts, what is working and what is not working in response to women’s health.

The Summit was attended by 79 (53F, 26M) persons on Day 1 and 69 (50F and 19M) persons on Day 2. A number of organisations were represented including; ACTS101 Uganda, The International Community of Women living with HIV Eastern Africa (ICWEA), The Alliance of Women Advocating for Change (AWAC), OGERA, String incept solutions (SIS), Joint Adherent Brothers and Sisters against AIDS (JABASA), Preventive care international (PCI), Big Eye, Trans Advocacy Initiative Uganda (TAI UG), Lady Mermaid Empowerment Center, Positive Men’s Union (POMU), Uganda Network of AIDs Service Organizations (UNASO), Naguru Youth Health Network (NYHN), JCRC, NACWOLA, CYSRA -UGANDA, Positive Women with Disabilities in Uganda (POWODU), Girls Must Uganda, Grass Root Child and Youth Relief, Peer to peer, Vision Group, Family radio, TASO, Super FM, Mama’s Club UG, MSFC, Bukedde family, Women@40, Salt, WERO. Baaba TV, UNYPA, MOWHA, Private Sector secretariat, Stigimaless, GCOWAU, SSS and One Dollar HIV and AIDS Initiative among others.

The summit kicked off with participants discussing the reasons for the choice of HIV Prevention options they use. They also made commitments as to what their respective organisations would focus on for the benefit of women in Uganda.

Subsequent presentations focused on the status of research into new and improved HIV Prevention methods and the status of plans for these interventions to be rolled out and ready for use by women across the world.

Dr. Daniel Byamukama, the Director HIV Prevention at Uganda AIDS Commission (UAC) made a presentation on the national efforts to end HIV/AIDS as a public health threat by 2030. He highlighted that the commission had developed a framework that focuses on six results. Achieving these results, would give us zero new HIV infections, zero AIDS related deaths, and zero stigma by 2030

Mr. George Tamale, the Executive Director of the Private Sector Secretariat made a presentation on the strategies the secretariat was implementing to protect most at-risk women in the private sector. He listed a number of interventions under way to protect women from harassment and violence in the world of work.

The second day of the summit started with a peaceful demonstration/march from Mulago to Fairway Hotel advocating for the roll out and funding of the Dapivirine Vaginal Ring. A week prior to the Women’s Summit a Petition was written calling for continued support to rollout Dapivirine Vaginal Ring for the safety of Ugandan women. The petition was signed by 293 people. This was followed by a twitter storm that had 887 tweets, reached 2,390,833, 1,509 retweets and 3,152 waves in 8 days.

Finally, a communique was developed that highlighted the priorities that women demand the duty bearers to support for women’s health. These included; access to HIV prevention materials, funding SRHR and STI commodities in the country and to hold duty bearers accountable for the rampant stock outs among others.