Our mission

The mission of the Malaysian AIDS Council is to represent, mobilise and strengthen non-governmental organisations and communities to ensure political commitment and effective response in a supportive environment at national and local levels. In scaling up its unified efforts, the Malaysian AIDS Council will work in partnership. With government, private sector, international organisations and people living with HIV.

The Malaysian AIDS Council (MAC) was established in 1992 as an initiative of the Ministry of Health to be an umbrella organisation of NGOs working on HIV/AIDS issues. The aim of setting up the Council was to maximise the community response to HIV/AIDS and to ensure efficient use of limited resources. The Council, which initially consisted of 18 NGOs, has since grown to 42 in 2008.

Our membership

Membership of the MAC is open to all registered NGOs and societies which are interested and involved in HIV-related activities. These Partner Organisations (POs) range from community-based grassroot Sorganisations and faith-based organisations (FBOs) that work solely on HIV-related activities to large professional associations, national organisations with a primary focus other than HIV and FBOs. In the past, many of these NGOs were centred in Kuala Lumpur and other large cities. In recent years, in response to the epidemic, several community-based NGOs have emerged in smaller and rural areas including in East Malaysia. Most of these focus their activities in providing care and support to those who are HIV infected.

In the early years, much of MAC’s activities focused on advocacy and raising awareness of the AIDS epidemic in Malaysia to increase commitment of political leaders and of government, corporate and community leaders as well as strengthen prevention efforts. In a largely conservative society, HIV and especially related issues of sex, drug use and same sex relationships were and remain difficult topics to discuss and to act upon. Since the early 1990s as the epidemic grew more visible, MAC has increased its focus on the provision of care and support to those infected. Another significant activity of MAC through its sister organisation, the Malaysian AIDS Foundation (MAF), has centred on fundraising which has also been contributing to increasing awareness of HIV/AIDS in the community.

A more concerted effort towards prevention, treatment, care and support programmes was made possible in 2003 when MAC secured funding from the government for its activities. With this fund, MAC was able to co-ordinate and manage prevention, care and support activities that were designed and proposed by the POs in response to local needs. Each year, MAC’s annual plans were developed from these individual proposals submitted by the POs without a Strategic Plan to guide its actions and activities. As a result, although effective results were seen, many of these projects and activities were one-off projects with limited impact.

In 2007, in response to the government’s National Strategic Plan on HIV/AIDS and the increased burden of the epidemic and the government’s National Strategic Plan on HIV/AIDS, it became evident that MAC needed to formulate its own Strategic Plans to provide clear directions for the organisation to scale up to effectively respond to these new challenges and in line with the government’s National Strategic Plan on HIV/AIDS. The increased burden of the epidemic, the increased funding that has been made available through the Ninth Malaysia Plan, the larger geographic scope of MAC’s reach, and the increased expectations on MAC as the leading organisation in the country to respond to the epidemic led to the realisation that a comprehensive Strategic Plan that will guide the unified efforts of MAC Secretariat and MAC POs was crucial in moving the agenda forward in a cohesive, comprehensive and effective manner. At the end of 2007, MAC took the steps to begin the process of formulating its Strategic Plan for 2008-2010.

Malaysian AIDS Council