While global prevalence of HIV infection (percentage of persons infected with HIV) appears to have stabilized in recent years, the global number of people living with HIV is increasing because of ongoing accumulation of new infections with longer survival times, measured over a continuously growing general population.
Across the world, a small but growing number of countries have reduced HIV prevalence through sound prevention efforts. The high rates of transmission of HIV result largely from failure to use the available and effective prevention strategies and tools, and poor coverage of HIV prevention programmes. HIV prevention services were only reaching 20% of people in need in 2005, while coverage for key populations at higher risk of exposure to HIV were considerably lower.
Effective HIV prevention programming focuses on the critical relationships between the epidemiology of HIV infection, the risk behaviours that expose to HIV transmission, and also addresses the collective social and institutional factors, such as sexual norms, gender inequality, and HIV related stigma, that will otherwise continue to fuel HIV epidemic.
Risk behaviours are enmeshed in complex webs of economic, legal, political, cultural and psychosocial determinants that must be analyzed and addressed by policies that are also effectively implemented, and through scaled-up programming.
Comprehensive HIV prevention requires a combination of programmatic and policy actions that promote safer behaviours, reduce vulnerability to transmission, encourage use of key prevention technologies, promote social norms that favor risk reduction and address drivers of the epidemic.
Effective prevention efforts focus on measures that directly support risk reduction by providing information and skills as well as access to needed commodities (such as condoms, sterile injecting equipment, and drug substitution therapy) for the populations most in need. In short, national planners and policymakers must: 1) Know their epidemic; and 2) Set priorities accordingly.
Prevention and treatment must be scaled up in a balanced way, to capitalize fully on synergies between the two. Comprehensive HIV prevention requires a combination of programmatic interventions and policy actions that promote safer behaviours, reduce biological and social vulnerabilities to transmission, encourage use of key prevention technologies, and promote social norms that favour risk reduction.
HIV prevention includes addressing an array of issues discussed in other thematic areas in the policy section of the website. Forging links among HIV prevention with related programmes and services such as sexual and reproductive health services and legal services for women, can also contribute to intensification of HIV prevention. Strong linkages as well as special efforts to reach those at higher risk and excluded from access to services will result in more relevant and cost-effective programmes with greater impact.
Essential Policy Actions for HIV Prevention
- Ensure that human rights are promoted, protected and respected and that measures are taken to eliminate discrimination and combat stigma.
- Build and maintain leadership from all sections of society, including governments, affected communities, nongovernmental organizations, faith-based organizations, the education sector, media, the private sector and trade unions.
- Involve people living with HIV, in the design, implementation and evaluation of prevention strategies, addressing the distinct prevention needs.
- Address cultural norms and beliefs, recognizing both the key role they may play in supporting prevention efforts and the potential they have to fuel HIV transmission.
- Promote gender equality and address gender norms and relations to reduce the vulnerability of women and girls, involving men and boys in this effort.
- Promote widespread knowledge and awareness of how HIV is transmitted and how infection can be averted.
- Promote the links between HIV prevention and sexual and reproductive health.
- Support the mobilization of community-based responses throughout the continuum of prevention, care and treatment.
- Promote programmes targeted at HIV prevention needs of key affected groups and populations.
- Mobilizing and strengthening financial, and human and institutional capacity across all sectors, particularly in health and education.
- Review and reform legal frameworks to remove barriers to effective, evidence based HIV prevention, combat stigma and discrimination and protect the rights of people living with HIV or vulnerable or at risk to HIV.
- Ensure that sufficient investments are made in the research and development of, and advocacy for, new prevention technologies.
The latest from the GCWA
19 Sep, 2011|
GCWA-ALN Global Plan Virtual Consultation
24 Aug, 2011|
What Works for Women and Girls: Evidence for HIV/AIDS Interventions, now available at www.whatworksforwomen.org, is a comprehensive review of successful HIV programming for women and girls spanning data from more than 2,000 scientific articles and reports in nearly 100 countries. Published by the Open Society Foundations’ Public Health Program, this valuable resource provides a centralized, searchable location for policymakers, donors, and program planners to review evidence of effective gender-specific programming. With scarce resources for HIV and AIDS programs—and a gro
28 Jul, 2011|
GCWA at the International AIDS Society Conference 2011
28 Jul, 2011|
Geneva / women's rights and HIV: Report back on the GCWA session at the 2011 International AIDS Society Conference
The Global Coalition on Women and AIDS (GCWA) engaged at the 6th International AIDS Society (IAS) Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Care, which took place in Rome from 17-20 July 2011. It was a great success and we would like to share our feedback from our activities there! Working in partnership with the ATHENA Network, WECARE+ and the Salamander Trust, the GCWA sought to ensure the meaningful participation of women, in particular young women living with HIV and in all their diversities, throughout the conference.
20 Jul, 2011|
Global / HIV Prevention: Global coalition of women call for HIV prevention revolution for women and girls
At the 6th IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention in Rome, a global coalition of women representing international, national and local communities of people living with HIV/AIDS, HIV non-governmental organizations, and researchers identified recent developments as components of a potential HIV prevention revolution.
8 Jun, 2011|
At the United Nations in New York, leader are gathering to chart the future of the global response to HIV.
25 Feb, 2010|
Kenyan women are becoming infected with HIV during pregnancy at very high rates, and repeat testing prior to delivery or at the earliest possible opportunity after birth should be encouraged in order to reduce mother to child transmission, Kenyan researchers reported last week at the Seventeenth Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in San Francisco. When mothers who tested tested negative before giving birth were retested six weeks after having given birth at six health clinics in Nairobi and Western Kenya, they showed a significant HIV incidence researchers reported last w
13 Feb, 2010|
Prevention-Circumcision: Male circumcision and risk of male-to-female HIV-1 transmission: a multinational prospective
Male circumcision reduces female-to-male HIV-1 transmission risk by approximately 60%. Data assessing the effect of circumcision on male-to-female HIV-1 transmission are conflicting, with one observational study among HIV-1-serodiscordant couples showing reduced transmission but a randomized trial suggesting no short-term benefit of circumcision. Data were collected as part of a prospective study among African HIV-1-serodiscordant couples were analyzed for the relationship between circumcision status of HIV-1-seropositive men and risk of HIV-1 acquisition among their female partners.
10 Feb, 2010|
The overlap between injecting drug use and sex work is a driving force in the so-called “feminization” of Asia’s HIV/AIDS epidemic. Between 70 and 80 percent of women injecting drug users (IDUs) are involved in some kind of sex work, according to Ratna Mardiati, a former director of the Drug Dependence Hospital (RSKO) in East Jakarta with 14 years’ experience dealing with injecting drug users. “They are not formal sex workers but they sell their bodies when they need money,” she says. Other sources of structural inequality, such as the gender wage gap — which sees Indonesian women earning on
9 Feb, 2010|
Kingston - Minister of Health, Hon. Rudyard Spencer, has appealed to Jamaican women to get tested for HIV, and to take more responsibility for their sexual behaviour by using a condom during sexual encounters. The call came as the nation observes Safer Sex Week, February 7-14, under the theme, "Smarter Women Always Buy, Carry and Use Condoms." Mr. Spencer said that the urgent call is for women to buy, carry and use condoms, correctly and consistently. In his message to commemorate National Safer Sex Week, Mr.