Eastern and Southern Africa

Social Protection and HIV: Research Implications for Policy by UNICEF, the Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Inter-Agency Task Team on Children Affected by AIDS (RIATT-ESA) and the Coalition for Children Affected by AIDS contain the following six briefs:

1: How can Social Protection reduce adolescent HIV-risk?

2: Combination Social Protection improves adolescent ART-adherence

3: Combination Social Protection reduces HIV-risk in adolescents

4: Social Protection: potential for improving HIV outcomes among adolescents

5: Social Protection and the Sustainable Development Goals

6: Combination Social Protection lowers unprotected sex in HIV-positive adolescents

HIV-sensitive Social Protection: With focus on creating linkages between social cash transfer programmes and HIV services describes an intervention aiming to strengthen the linkages between HIV services and national social protection programmes and provides lessons learned from implementing the intervention in four countries. The focus of the programme is on families with children and adolescents, vulnerable to, or affected by HIV and AIDS. The programme, funded by the Government of the Netherlands, is now being implemented in Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe in close collaboration with national, provincial and district level governments.

Building on the collaborative effort that resulted in tremendous progress in scaling up lifesaving anti-retroviral treatment and preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV in Eastern and Southern Africa region (ESAR), UNAIDS and UNICEF launched a campaign titled All In to End Adolescent AIDS (All In) in 2015 in Nairobi, Kenya.

This report highlights how All In mobilized partners, engaged adolescents and young people and influenced policies and programmes in the 14 high-burden HIV countries in ESAR. The report documents the progress made in a few short years on adolescent HIV, and offers suggestions and recommendations on how to strengthen strategic information, apply evidence-based programming and mobilize resources for adolescents in the HIV response. 

The Kingdom of Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) released its National Strategic Plan for Ending AIDS and Syphilis in Children (2018 – 2022). This strategy aligns with the ‘Three Frees’ Framework and aims to make a final push towards the elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis as well as an end to paediatric AIDS.

This Plan has been designed to ensure that every child is born and remains HIV and syphillis free, and that every pregnant woman or mother living with HIV have access to lifelong HIV treatment. In addition, every child and adolescent living with HIV should be linked to quality HIV treatment, care and support to realize their full potential without stigma and discrimination.