This document is written for national HIV surveillance programme staff responsible for monitoring trends in country HIV epidemics. Its purpose is to describe how routine prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT) programme data can be used to conduct HIV surveillance among pregnant women attending antenatal clinics (ANC). These guidelines assume that surveillance programmes have already assessed the readiness of routine programme data to be used for surveillance. WHO’s 2013 Guidelines for assessing the utility of prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) programme data for HIV sentinel surveillance among pregnant women describes these assessment methods.

In June 2016, ICAP and partners convened a three-day, PEPFAR-supported meeting to explore the practical challenges of scaling up routine viral load testing in sub-Saharan Africa. The meeting took place in Ezulwini, Swaziland and brought together over 150 public health experts from 15 countries. This meeting report provides a comprehensive summary of the convening.

The first WHO guidelines on HIV and Infant Feeding in 2010 recommended the use of antiretroviral drugs to prevent postnatal transmission of HIV through breastfeeding. Since then, almost all countries prioritised in the UNAIDS ‘Global Plan towards the elimination of new HIV infections among children by 2015 and keeping their mothers alive’ have adopted the approach of promoting and supporting breastfeeding and the provision of lifelong antiretroviral treatment as the strategy to optimise HIV-free survival among HIV-exposed, uninfected infants and children. The 2016 guidelines provide two recommendations and two guiding practice statements and they comment on the implications for: (1) routine monitoring and evaluation, and (2) conflict and emergency settings.

Supplement to consolidated guidelines on HIV testing services

To reduce new HIV infections globally to fewer than 500 000 by 2020, a step towards ending the HIV epidemic as a public health threat by 2030, we need to fast-track the response, including renewed commitment to, sustained funding for and scaled-up implementation of HIV prevention programmes.

In this report, UNAIDS is announcing that 18.2 million people now have access to HIV treatment. The Fast-Track response is working. Increasing treatment coverage is reducing AIDS-related deaths among adults and children. But the life-cycle approach has to include more than just treatment. Tuberculosis (TB) remains among the commonest causes of illness and death among people living with HIV of all ages, causing about one third of AIDS-related deaths in 2015. These deaths could and should have been prevented.

Start Free, Stay Free, AIDS Free initiative aims to galvanize global momentum around a shared and ambitious agenda to build on the progress achieved under the Global Plan towards the elimination of new HIV infections among children by 2015 and keeping their mothers alive. The Global Plan resulted in remarkable progress, reducing new HIV infections among children by 60% in 21 of the most affected countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet the job is far from done. In 2015, 150,000 [110,000–190,000] children became newly infected with HIV globally, 110,000 [78,000–150,000] of whom lived in the 21 Global Plan priority countries.