HIV and adolescents: Guidance for HIV testing and counselling and care for adolescents living with HIV
Adolescents (10–19 years) and young people (20–24 years) continue to be vulnerable, both socially and economically, to HIV infection despite efforts to date. This is particularly true for adolescents — especially girls — who live in settings with a generalized HIV epidemic or who are members of key populations at higher risk for HIV acquisition or transmission through sexual transmission and injecting drug use. In 2012, there were approximately 2.1 million adolescents living with HIV. About one-seventh of all new HIV infections occur during adolescence.
The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) has launched a new framework to accelerate action in reaching 15 million people with antiretroviral treatment by 2015––the goal set by United Nations Member States in 2011.
The framework, entitled Treatment 2015, offers countries and partners both practical and innovative ways to increase the number of people accessing antiretroviral medicines. These medicines will not only enable people living with HIV to live longer and healthier lives, they will also help prevent new HIV infections.
A new set of guidelines and training tools dealing with the legal, ethical and counselling issues related to HIV testing of children is now available for HIV/AIDS practitioners working with children.
Dr Heidi van Rooyen, project team leader and research director at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), explains: “These guidelines explore in simple and practical terms the psychosocial implications as well as the legal and policy obligations relating to HIV counselling and testing of children.
“The tools describe what practitioners can do to ensure that HIV testing of children takes place in a way that protects and promotes their rights and is conducted in their best interests."
There has been a lot of discussion and a lot of resource mobilisation (donors setting money aside) on medical male circumcision. This has been so given recent research findings and the desperate need to find 'something' to do to increase real results in the prevention, treatment and care, and support arena. However, concerns have been expressed about the real implications. The World Health Organization (WHO) held a meeting in Mombasa last month to discuss this issue and the Aids Vaccine Advocacy Coalition held a meeting prior to this to particularly focus on growing concerns regarding the impact of medical male circumcision on an epidemic in which women are mostly infected and affected. I include a background document and a consensus statement from the meeting.
This pocket booklet is aimed at providing a quick reference for the busy health professional to some of the more frequently used tools in effective business communication. Keep it in a place where you can access it quickly in a time of need such as before an important presentation or writing a report.