Regional Virtual Think Tank and Webinar Series
Adolescent Girls and Young Women (AGYW) ages 15-24 make up the majority of young people living with HIV in Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA), and they are more likely than their male peers to acquire HIV. WHO recommends that people at substantial risk of HIV infection should be offered Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), and UNAIDS encourages countries to prioritize PrEP implementation for AGYW in extremely high burden areas, as well as subgroups of AGYW identified as being at higher risk. Given the limited experience with providing PrEP outside of research and demonstration projects in ESA region, there is often uncertainty around the strategies for effective implementation of PrEP targeting AGYW. More understanding and guidance is needed to identify ways to successfully implement PrEP programmes for AGYW at national and sub-national level, especially in the context of service disruptions and fear related to COVID-19.
To address this, UNICEF together with WHO AFRO, the Global Fund and support from the SIDA funded 2gether 4 SRHR programme convened a virtual think tank between 23 February - 9 March 2021, followed by a regional dissemination webinar involving researchers and implementers to share and consolidate learnings from PrEP research and demonstration projects and articulate implementation lessons for countries in moving forward with quality implementation of PrEP for AGYW at scale. These expert exchanges included recommendations on how to overcome challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The session recordings and presentations for download are available below.
Session 1: Demand Creation, Engagement and Participation
23 February, 2021
Session 5: Measuring and Monitoring Effective Use
9 March, 2021