Pacific

Conference hears that help with HIV often denied to remote parts of Pacific

19:14 pm on 19 April 2010

An HIV/AIDS summit in Marshall Islands last week discussed ways to further increase awareness on the disease in communties most at risk.

The summit brought together experts and other people from the US affiliated states to hear about their experience living with - and fighting HIV/AIDS.

Our correspondent, Giff Johnson, was there.

"There was quite a bit of discussion trying to get to higher risk population. People in the HIV prevention business believe that the higher risk population is generally urban based. Now this is not to discount that there's HIV on outer islands. A lot of these islands in the US affiliated Pacific, their main source of testing for HIV is the prenatal clinics. But what we're learning that doesn't seem to be getting to the really high risk, youth-adolescent population. So there was discussion how to try to develop that and that would be more in line with co-operation with non-governmental organisations."

That's Majuro correspondent Giff Johnson.