Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis and Adolescent Girls and Young Women in Eastern and Southern Africa: The latest insights

Eastern and southern Africa (ESA) is the world’s most heavily HIV-impacted region, with adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) disproportionately affected. To support the scale-up of PrEP amongst AGYW in ESA, in September 2021 UNICEF and partners released the implementation brief “Improving the Quality of Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis Implementation for Adolescent Girls and Young Women in Eastern and Southern Africa,” highlighting considerations to help improve the quality and coverage of AGYW PrEP programming.

The PrEP landscape has evolved significantly in the three years since the original brief was released, both in scale and variety. This updated brief summarises the most recent evidence on AGYW PrEP provision, serving as a supplement to the original 2021 implementation brief.

Spotlight on the UNICEF HIV/AIDS Fund: Results achieved in 2022 to achieve an AIDS-free future for children and adolescents

UNICEF’s HIV/AIDS Thematic Fund is a global flexible funding pool. It enables us to strengthen systems to ensure an AIDS-free future for children and adolescents. This offers donors an exciting opportunity to target funding specifically to HIV/AIDS outcomes, while also giving UNICEF the flexibility to allocate funds based on where the need is greatest for children, including critically underfunded priorities at the country level, humanitarian response activities, and where funds will have the greatest impact. Thanks to our generous donors UNICEF’s Global HIV/ AIDS Thematic Fund income in 2022 reached over $5.7 million.

This document features the results achieved in 2022, when supporters of the HIV/AIDS Thematic Fund enabled UNICEF to allocate resources to 45 countries and territories. Funds were allocated to countries based on several measures determining the burden of HIV/AIDS on the population. These included the number of AIDS-related deaths in the country and the number of new infections among children and adolescents in the country. Funds were also allocated to UNICEF’s regional and global headquarters, supporting the vital work that allows thematic funding to unlock wide-scale results and impact the world over.

Technical Brief on Paediatric HIV Case-Finding: Beyond Infant Testing

Despite global progress in HIV treatment for children, the gap between adult and paediatric treatment coverage continues to widen. This gap is driven primarily by barriers to HIV diagnosis in children, but in the past decade those barriers have shifted.

Scaling-up HIV case-finding efforts for children presents several challenges, including limited access to testing services, lack of provider preparedness to offer testing to children, stigma and discrimination, policy barriers related to age of consent, and inadequate health systems. The aim of this technical brief is to offer countries a guide to address these challenges and enhance HIV case-finding for children to improve testing coverage for children at risk for HIV. This technical brief focuses primarily on how programmes can identify those children who may have missed out on EID testing, who were never tested after breastfeeding or whose mothers were not enrolled in care.

HIV-sensitive Social Protection - ESAR Report (2018)

HIV-sensitive Social Protection: With focus on creating linkages between social cash transfer programmes and HIV services describes an intervention aiming to strengthen the linkages between HIV services and national social protection programmes and provides lessons learned from implementing the intervention in four countries. The focus of the programme is on families with children and adolescents, vulnerable to, or affected by HIV and AIDS. The programme, funded by the Government of the Netherlands, is now being implemented in Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe in close collaboration with national, provincial and district level governments.

Lessons Learned for HIV Programming: Mozambique

UNICEF's Lessons Learned for HIV Programming: 2013 Floods in Gaza Province, Mozambique

Despite the high HIV prevalence in gaza Province, HIV was not accounted for in the initial emergency response and assessments. This oversight affected treatment continuity and other services for PLHIV. Continued access to HIV treatment and services is critical to preventing new infections and drug resistance.

Mozambique Tratamento Antiretroviral

Em Moçambique, a pandemia do HIV/SIDA é assumida como um dos desafios de âmbito multissectorial. No que concerne ao Serviço Nacional de Saúde, múltiplas acções integradas têm sido implementadas nos últimos anos pelo Ministério da Saúde (MISAU) com vista a alargar as medidas de prevenção, diagnóstico e o início atempado dos cuidados e tratamento, sendo que em 2013 foi implementado o Plano de Aceleração de Resposta ao HIV e SIDA, que contempla nos seus objectivos a expansão dos Serviços TARV e a melhoria da qualidade assistencial.