The COVID-19 pandemic continues to have devastating impacts in the Philippines and is widening inequalities even more. On top of the intolerable loss of life; the job losses; the poverty; the huge socio-economic impact, the increased violence against women; the human rights violations, it is disrupting our health system and undermining programs essential to address HIV and other global health priorities. HIV infection in the country continues to rise even when lockdowns are in place.

According to UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima, “Global solidarity and shared responsibility will help us beat the coronavirus, end the AIDS epidemic and guarantee the right to health for all.“

With health at the top of the current political agenda, we must seize this opportunity to transform our country and “build back better” to end COVID and HIV in the Philippines. For us Warays, the mantra “Build Back Better” was our collective experience during the harrowing days that followed Typhoon Haiyan struck Eastern Visayas. Here’s how we can “Build Back Better” our HIV response:

• Building back better means reimagining systems of health so that they are agile and inclusive. Weak health systems that are underfunded, understaffed, and centralized health services put people at risk, especially now during the COVID-19 pandemic together with the HIV epidemic. Resilient health systems is about integration, it is about decentralization of community-led efforts into national responses for HIV and COVID-19, from decision-making to delivery, from planning to monitor of response.

• Building back better means stepping up public investment to ensure universal public healthcare. This would also mean eliminating corruption in our health insurance, holding people accountable, and reorganizing structures and policies that perpetuates corruption.

• To build back better means placing human rights and dignity of all people at the center of HIV and COVID response.That is the lesson we learned from years HIV response. It is a myth to believe that there can be a trade-off between human rights and public health. They go together. Human rights are the very means by which governments can fight and win against any pandemic—including COVID-19 and HIV.

• Building back better means developing and producing health technologies that are global public goods since we cannot repeat the mistakes, we made in the early years of the HIV response when anti-retroviral treatments (ARV’s) were available, but prices were so high that only people in rich countries were getting ARVs and living long healthy lives and when millions of people were dying in poor countries. We cannot repeat that mistake.

This is a make-or-break moment for “building back better” and making true on the promise of the right to health of everyone. The fate of our young generation is compromised because of this pandemic.What we need is bold political leadership to get us back on track to end the fight against HIV and to win against COVID. We will have to put human rights, gender equality, and communities at the front and at the center of all that we do. We can do it.

You too have a part in ending the AIDS epidemic! #LeoChristianLauzon