ABSTRACT
This chapter recounts the earliest effort by the United Nations through its health agency, the WHO, to put in place an institutionalized arrangement for the coordination of the global response to the HIV/ AIDS epidemic. It traces the history of the GPA from its establishment as a WHO-led global program in 1987 to its demise in 1992/1993, following a mixed performance which ranged from initial successes in mobilizing what were then massive financial resources and international support for a still relatively unknown epidemic to the challenges and tensions implicit in the inter-agency and intra-WHO rivalries that marked the operation of the program. Noteworthy achievements of the GPA which are still pertinent to the global response included the promotion of a rights-based approach which was aimed at addressing the serious problem of stigma and discrimination associated with the disease, and the need to recognize the non-health and multidimensional characteristics of the epidemic and their impact. Yet, it was on account of failing to respond adequately to this latter need that criticisms were levied against the GPA that contributed to its demise. This first attempt at an inter-agency coordination at the global level to combat HIV/ AIDS, or any global infectious disease for that matter, could be seen as the precursor for the model of UN inter-agency collaboration that was to emerge a decade later as the joint program, UNAIDS, which is the subject of Chapter 3.
