UNICEF Satellite Session at AIDS 2020
6 July, 2020
In the light of slow progress and constrained funding for the global HIV response, UNICEF’s satellite session, chaired by Executive Director Henrietta Fore, explored opportunities to accelerate access to ART for children and adolescents, catalytic technologies for HIV diagnosis, and how data can help prioritize and target the HIV response. Speakers from UNICEF, Unitaid and governments of Malawi and Ghana highlighted that point-of-care technology for multi-disease testing, early infant diagnosis and viral load monitoring can save costs, improve HIV outcomes and strengthen health systems to respond to COVID-19 and prepare for other outbreaks. The speakers also highlighted the promise of scaling up proven differentiated service delivery models such as family-based index testing and Community Treatment Supporters for Adolescents (CATS). To optimize prevention efforts to reach the adolescents and young people at highest risk of HIV infection, the Data for Children Collaborative demonstrated how a pilot initiative in Côte d’Ivoire is triangulating innovative data sources to map vulnerability data and create sub-national adolescent risk profiles, thereby enabling better geographical targeting of programmes