We are one of the recipients of the Global Fund multi-country grant to support the sustainable scale-up of HIV services for key populations in Asia: This eight-country Global Fund grant will be covering Bhutan, Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste, Malaysia, Philippines, Laos, Mongolia, and Sri Lanka.

The grant aims to promote sustainable services for key populations at higher risk of HIV exposure including sex workers, men who have sex with men, transgender people, people who use drugs, in the Asia region.

The grant will build on existing Global Fund-supported programs in country and multi-country grants for key populations as well as focus on developing strategies to promote the scale-up of necessary interventions and their long-term financing in each country to:

• Secure up-to-date strategic information, particularly on key epidemiological and response information including population size estimates and programme coverage, community needs assessment of key populations to inform program design;
• Scale-up outreach to key populations and improve their access to prevention, testing and treatment and retention in the service cascade; 
• Strengthen community responses and systems to support increased scale-up of services for key populations;
• Strengthen community advocacy for the sustainability of community-led and community-owed services through community-based research, effective use of data and other strategic information and through community mobilization;
• Address barriers to access including addressing stigma and discrimination and other human rights- and gender-related barriers to services, where relevant;
• Secure the long-term sustainability of increased service delivery at national levels through securing domestic investment and spending, exploring innovative approaches and identifying alternative sources of funding for key programs.

A series of meetings are taking place from the 11th- 15th of March 2019.