Vientiane, 5-6 August 2024: ERIA and the Ministry of Health of Lao PDR organised a 2-day regional consultative meeting to provide updates on the regional response to HIV/AIDS, assess the revised ASEAN Health Sector Work Plan on HIV and AIDS 2021–2025, exchange best practices for expanding services, and discuss differentiated service delivery for key populations. The event was attended by the Vice Minister of Health of Lao PDR, Lao PDR government officials from the Ministry of Health (MoH) and the Centre for HIV/AIDS/STI (CHAS) of Lao PDR, and representatives from ASEAN Member States (AMS) Health Cluster 2, ERIA, UNAIDS, and WHO.

Yasuhiro Yamada, ERIA’s Senior Policy Fellow for Mekong Affairs, delivered the welcome remarks, emphasising ERIA's dedication to assisting AMS by leveraging its expertise in economics, healthcare, and social welfare. He reiterated ERIA's commitment to collaborating with AMS leaders to support vulnerable populations and specific communities in ASEAN. Yamada also expressed ERIA's strong commitment to ensuring the success of the event, hoping it would result in key recommendations to be shared at the ASEAN Health Ministers’ Meeting (AHMM) 2024 in the following days.

Following Yamada's remarks, Dr Phonepadith Xangsayarath, Director General of the Department of Communicable Disease Control at the MoH of Lao PDR, highlighted the significance of the occasion. As ASEAN’s chair for HIV, Lao PDR must continue advocating and working with all AMS to achieve the Work Plan targets. Dr Xangsayarath noted that the meeting aimed for AMS to share innovative practices to improve collaboration and reach more key populations. He expressed confidence that ASEAN could achieve the 95-95-95 targets by 2025 and eradicate AIDS by 2030 through solid collaboration and strengthened relationships within AMS, including ERIA.

Dr Phayvan Keopaserth, Vice Minister of Health of Lao PDR, emphasised the event's goal of providing services for vulnerable groups and developing tailored approaches for their communities. He stressed the importance of summarising recommendations and discussions to enhance the health of vulnerable populations and implement strategies to address challenges faced by key populations through constructive participation and collaboration. He concluded his speech by officially opening the meeting.

The meeting featured multiple sessions, with expert speakers presenting at the first session. Dr Khin Cho Win Htin, Regional Adviser for HIV Prevention and Treatment at UNAIDS Asia Pacific Regional Office, provided an update on the global and regional response to HIV. Dr Jim Catampongan, Senior Officer of the Health Division of the ASEAN Secretariat, reviewed developments in the ASEAN Work Plan on HIV and AIDS 2021–2025. Dr Kiyohiko Izumi, Team Lead for HIV, Hepatitis, and STIs at the WHO Western Pacific Regional Office (WPRO), shared the final presentation on Diversified Services Delivery Strategic Initiatives (DSD SI). The last segment of the first day included presentations from AMS participants from Health Cluster 2, followed by an open discussion led by Lao PDR

On the second morning, Lao PDR presented a summary of lessons from AMS innovations for scaling up key populations based on the previous day's discussions. This was followed by a panel discussion with WPRO, UNAIDS, and ERIA, featuring Dr Antonio Villanueva, Senior Research Fellow at ERIA on Healthcare Policy (Clinical Trials and Health Development). Dr Villanueva expressed ERIA’s pleasure at being part of the regional effort to address the HIV issue, including focusing on differentiated support for political engagement at both bilateral and regional (multilateral) levels, raising awareness through education, providing legal protections, and implementing integrated medical interventions to address budget concerns.

The session concluded with an impactful segment where participants were divided into four small group discussions led by MoH and CHAS of Lao PDR. Each group explored specific topics such as Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), HIV testing, community-based engagement and empowerment, and Antiretroviral Therapy (ART), aiming to gather diverse perspectives. Additionally, they were tasked with exploring new innovative ways to support key populations by creating enabling environments, empowering communities and leaders, enhancing provider capacity and resources, and overcoming barriers in their respective countries. The meeting concluded with a plenary discussion summarising actionable steps, which were presented at AHMM 2024 on 8 August 2024.