Nordic networking in Malmö

The member organizations of HIV-Nordic convened in Malmö for a networking meeting during the weekend of 27 – 29 September. 

The meeting kicked off Friday late afternoon with a mingle together with two other local organizations, Noaks Ark Mosaik and Positiva Gruppen Syd. After a presentation round and welcome to Malmö, Povi from Noaks Ark Mosaik presented their operations and learnings from working with HIV and the migrant population. Joost from Positiva Gruppen Syd gave a short introduction to the work with people living with HIV in the region and Anton introduced Chemwise, a new project aimed at social support and harm reduction for chemsex users.

On the second day, the topics for the networking meeting were country updates, dose packaging of hiv medicines, AIDS2024 recap, advocacy policy papers development, future projects and more. 

Oliver from HIV-Denmark informed about the renovations of Kafé Knud being completed, the launch of their new website hiv-denmark.org, the project livpositiv.dk and the orientation evening that took place and was live streamed from Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen. At the event several healthcare professionals presented data on current issues in the field of HIV and living with HIV, other topics presented was mental health challenges in people living with HIV and young people living with HIV.

HivFinland shared news about the government proposed budget cuts, which could impact their operations. Advocacy and raising awareness towards decision makers are ongoing. The HIV Stigma Index, a tool to document and report on stigma surrounding HIV and people living with HIV, has been finalized and is available at https://www.stigmaindex.org/. HivFinland celebrated its 35th anniversary in September, and a birthday cake will be served at an open house in October. During Helsinki Pride A successful event ”HIV, Hope and Rock n’ roll” event was organised in a gay bar and the 20th Hope Day in June was celebrated with a sidewalk chalk event in front of the Central Library. A new HIV, Hepatitis B, C and D strategy will be published later this year by Finnish institute for health and welfare.

HivNorway announced that there will be changes in the national funding for HIV organizations, as well as a new national strategy on sexual health. The organization also held an Extra Annual Meeting about the formal approval on changing the HivNorway statues from demanding the chair to be living with HIV, to the majority of the board. Among the updates were also the news about a TV documentary on the HIV history in Norway, which is to be launched on national TV (NRK) on World AIDS Day.

Hiv-Sweden informed that the Swedish government has recently announced a new national strategy on HIV/AIDS and some other sexually transmitted infections as well as published cuts in the HIV budget for 2025. New IVF guidelines are to take place in October 2024, the guidelines managed by The National Board of Health and Welfare improves the right to IVF for women living with HIV. There are also ongoing talks about new recommendations for statins for people living with HIV above the age of 40, currently in a process to be rolled out. HIV-Sweden also announced that an online-peer gallery is in the making and will be finalized and ready to launch later this year. There is also a film campaign in the work aimed at decreasing stigma in relation to living with HIV.

The representative from HIV-Iceland was unfortunately sick and could not attend to provide updates from Iceland.

A common theme that emerged during the meeting is the budget cuts in hiv/aids funding in the Nordics. In three out of five countries organizations have experienced or are expecting budget cuts in the coming years. HIV-Nordic is discussing ways to stop the budget cuts and together push forward the argument to keep funding in place for interventions related to people living with HIV. In addition to this, HIV-Nordic have a set of project plans that we hope we will be able to lunch in the coming year.

The next meeting is set to take place in Helsinki during the last days of January 2025.