Infants

The starting point for this guideline is the point at which a woman has learnt that she is living with HIV, and it therefore covers key issues for providing comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights-related services and support for women living with HIV. As women living with HIV face unique challenges and human rights violations related to their sexuality and reproduction within their families and communities, as well as from the health-care institutions where they seek care, particular emphasis is placed on the creation of an enabling environment to support more effective health interventions and better health outcomes.

This guideline is meant to help countries to more effectively and efficiently plan, develop and monitor programmes and services that promote gender equality and human rights and hence are more acceptable and appropriate for women living with HIV, taking into account the national and local epidemiological context. It discusses implementation issues that health interventions and service delivery must address to achieve gender equality and support human rights.

‘Walking in our shoes; Perspectives of pregnant and breastfeeding women living with HIV on access to and retention in care in Malawi, Uganda and Zambia’ highlights the key factors that facilitate retention in care for women living with HIV and calls for increased focus on rights and dignity in care.

The report, presents the findings of community-led research related to the viewpoints and experiences of women who were initiated on antiretroviral treatment during pregnancy or breastfeeding and explores their perspectives on factors that have enabled them to successfully adhere to their treatment and retain in care.

Adolescents living with HIV have unique needs, and retention in care can be especially challenging for this population. Adolescent “teen clubs” can provide a source of social support that helps improve retention and adherence. HIV prevention among adolescents also remains challenging because there are multiple factors that can place adolescents at risk. Risk perception, especially among adolescent girls and young women (AGYW),remains low despite high levels of general knowledge about HIV. Further efforts are needed to support adolescents, especially AGYW, to understand and appreciate their own risk and to identify the most appropriate prevention strategies to protect themselves from acquiring HIV.

Towards an end to AIDS in children, adolescents and young women.

The current state of the AIDS response is not sufficient to end AIDS in children and adolescents.

PATA and PACF have worked across 9 countries and strengthened 36 community-clinic collaborations through their partnership on the three-year C3 programme on collaboration between Clinics and Community-Based Organisations (CBOs) to deliver services together for improved PMTCT-paediatric case finding and HIV treatment.

Together, PATA and PACF have identified how clinical-CBOs collaboration at a local level can be in transforming health responses. They developed a Clinic-Community Collaboration Toolkit and accompanying Be Connected e-learning course informed by the C3 programme’s successes and lessons learnt.

Through these new tools, they hope to continue empowering health providers as well as encouraging community-based staff and local coordinators to initiate, expand and improve upon joint activities and action plans, in a collaborative effort to strengthen their work on paediatric and adolescent HIV.

Appel pour l’accélération de l’élimination de la transmission mère-enfant du VIH et le traitement antirétroviral chez l’enfant en Afrique de l’ouest et du centre d’ici 2020

Call for the acceleration of the elimination of mother-to-child HIV transmission and antiretroviral treatment for children in West and Central Africa by 2020