Adolescent Prevention

For civil society organisations, youth activists, parliamentarians and journalists

In this new consolidated guidelines document on HIV prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care for key populations, the World Health Organization brings together all existing guidance relevant to five key populations – men who have sex with men, people who inject drugs, people in prisons and other closed settings, sex workers and transgender people – and updates selected guidance and recommendations.

This document puts forward a framework with new strategic directions for 2016–2021 on voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) for HIV prevention as the follow-on to the Joint Strategic Action Framework 2012–2016. The new directions focus on adolescent boys and men, and take into account a range of physical and psychosocial health issues. They highlight the need for innovative approaches to overcome current barriers to services, increase acceptability, and address inequalities in access and coverage. This document will be used to inform, both regionally and globally, an action-oriented and operational framework on VMMC and men’s health, with overlapping benefits for women’s health.

Supplement to consolidated guidelines on HIV testing services

This guidance document and its accompanying tool, the Adolescent Assessment and Decision-Makers Tool (AADM), were devised to facilitate country assessments aimed at strengthening the adolescent component of national HIV programmes. The purpose of the country assessments is to: (1) support country teams in the identification of equity and performance gaps affecting adolescent HIV programming; and (2) define priority actions to improve the effectiveness of the national adolescent HIV response.

Consultation on Clinical, Ethical and Operational Considerations for the implementation of Oral PreExposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) in Sexually Active Older Adolescents (15–19) at High Risk of HIV Infection

Young transgender people’s immediate HIV risk is related primarily to sexual behaviours, especially unprotected anal sex with an HIV positive partner, but structural factors in addition to those already noted make young transgender people especially vulnerable to HIV. Stigma and discrimination against transgender people frequently cause them to be rejected by their families and denied healthcare services, including access to HIV testing, counselling and treatment.

It has long been acknowledged that sex workers – female, male and transgender – are at high risk of HIV exposure, especially in low- and middle-income countries. This is due in part to a high number of sexual partners and working environment which is not conducive to sex workers’ being able to protect their health and the health of their clients, including widespread criminalisation of sex work, violence perpetrated by both state and non-state actors and extreme levels of stigma and discrimination.

This brief offers a concise account of current knowledge respond to the overlapping vulnerabilities of young people concerning the HIV risk and vulnerability of young people who inject drugs or the specific legal challenges and ethical who inject drugs; the barriers and constraints they face concerns in working with children. These vulnerabilities to appropriate services; examples of programmes that require responses that may go beyond the harm-reduction programmes recognized as effective for adults.