Start Free Stay Free AIDS Free

The Start Free Stay Free AIDS Free framework promotes a set of human rights-based interventions to end AIDS as a public health threat among children and adolescents. It focuses on enhancing actions in 23 countries with high numbers of children, adolescents and young women living with HIV.

Elimination Mother-to-Child Transmission off HIV and Syphilis

This guidance document provides standardized processes and consensus-developed criteria to validate EMTCT of HIV and syphilis, and to recognize high-HIV burden countries that have made significant progress on the path to elimination. The guidance places strong emphasis on country-led accountability, rigorous analysis, intensive programme assessment and multilevel collaboration, including the involvement of communities of women living with HIV. It provides guidance to evaluate the country’s EMTCT programme, the quality and accuracy of its laboratory and data collection mechanisms, as well as its efforts to uphold human rights and equality of women living with HIV, and their involvement in decision-making processes.

Assessing the Vulnerability and Risks of Adolescent Girls and Young Women in Eastern and Southern Africa: A Review of the Tools in Use

This regional report aims to strengthen risk-informed programming and facilitate scale up of simple and effective tools to identify and reach those adolescent girls and young women who are most in need of services and support. All the available tools included in the review are linked in the annexes and included in UNICEF's AGYW Programming and Implementation Repository. 

 

Start Free, Stay Free, AIDS Free: Final report on 2020 targets

In the global quest to end the AIDS epidemic as a public health threat by 2030, meeting the HIV-related needs of children, adolescents and pregnant and breastfeeding women represents a critical piece of unfinished business. To inject a sense of urgency in to global efforts to end the epidemic among children, adolescents and young women, global partners joined together in 2015 to launch the Start Free, Stay Free, AIDS Free framework. Unveiled as the global community was embracing a series of 2020 targets intended to Fast-Track the HIV response, Start Free, Stay Free, AIDS Free called for a super-Fast-Track approach to end AIDS as a public health threat among children, adolescents and young women by 2020.

Since the deadline for achieving the targets passed in December 2020, this is the final Start Free, Stay Free, AIDS Free progress report. Although the targets were global, partners identified 23 countries for intensified focus under the framework. This report specifically highlights progress against the targets in focus countries. The only focus countries outside sub-Saharan Africa (India and Indonesia) do not report data on Start Free, Stay Free, AIDS Free targets and are not covered in this report. 

UNICEF Health Results 2020: HIV and AIDS

This flyer provides a quick overview of UNICEF's results within HIV and AIDS in 2020. It describes achievements within UNICEF's main programmatic areas: prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, treatment of children and adolescents living with HIV, and HIV prevention in adolescents. 

UNICEF's Global Annual Results Report - Goal Area 1 describes results achieved in more detail from p. 132-150.
 

HIV Treatment, Care, and Support for Adolescents Living with HIV in Eastern and Southern Africa: A review of interventions for scale

Adolescents in Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) are key to achieving the global goal of ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030. ESA is home to 1.74 million adolescents living with HIV (ALHIV), representing 60 per cent of this population globally. In 12 ESA countries, AIDS is the leading cause of adolescent mortality. While there is an increasing focus on adolescents, the pace of progress remains slow, especially when compared with the growing needs of ALHIV.

It is time to deliver programmes at scale to address the needs of ALHIV, accelerating evidence of interventions producing results or showing significant promise for scale. This document examines and consolidates the current experiences of ALHIV programming in the region to support further implementation and scale-up of evidence-driven models. The findings serve as a call to action and the key considerations as a guide for governments and funding and implementing partners in scaling up service delivery to ALHIV.

Actions for improved clinical and prevention services: Preventing HIV and other sexually transmitted infections among women and girls using contraceptive services in contexts with high HIV incidence

This programmatic brief explores how to expand HIV and STI prevention and contraceptive method options in contraceptive services and, thus, to reduce HIV and STI incidence among adolescent girls and women. It focuses on settings with extremely high HIV prevalence and incidence. The brief complements existing guidance on HIV prevention and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), amplifies calls for action and outlines more comprehensive approaches to integration of SRHR and HIV services. It also emphasizes the importance of SRHR for women living with HIV. It aligns with updated WHO recommendations for contraceptive eligibility for women at high risk of HIV and other HIV guidance for adolescent girls and young women.

This brief is for national programme leaders, experts and members of national working groups on HIV and STI prevention in the context of contraceptive services. It is primarily relevant in settings with very high HIV prevalence in East and Southern Africa, in other high HIV prevalence settings in sub-Saharan Africa and for women from key populations in other regions. At the same time, it proposes differentiated strategies for settings with low, medium, high and extremely high HIV prevalence among women.