World Health Organization for Europe (WHO / Europe) and European center for diseases prevention and control (ECDC), organized joint meeting on European HIV/AIDS surveillance, which was held from 10-11 March 2016 in Bratislava, Slovakia. The meeting was attended by 53 countries from the European region as well as representatives of Regional offices and experts in the field of surveillance of HIV / AIDS, ECDC, UNICEF, IUSTI, EMCDDA, Global fund, the European Commission, representatives from the office of WHO / Europe , Institutes of public health, the US Centers for control and prevention, representatives of civil society, NGOs, etc.
Macedonia was represented by Prim. Dr. Zarko Karadzovski from the Institute of Public Health, National contact for sending data on HIV / AIDS to WHO and ECDC, as well as National coordinator for communicable diseases, ie, the person responsible for data exchange.
The overall aim of the meeting was to discuss how surveillance data can be used to inform HIV prevention and control efforts through construction of surveillance based indicators of the HIV continuum of care in Europe and central Asia.
The main points of the meeting were:
- Providing an update on recent global and regional developments of HIV cases,
- Sharing experiences and practices through the European format for reporting and carrying out the assessment of people living with HIV / AIDS.
- Discussion of the further implementation of HIV testing,
- Exploring possibilities for linkage using HIV case surveillance at European level,
- Review of data and future directions for improved data storage for HIV / AIDS
-Review the performance of the dataset and future directions for improved data collection and analysis for treatment, viral suppression and death.
