Guidance

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), with collaborating partners from the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Secretariat of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS), have developed this guidance to build upon and complement the UN International Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education (ITGSE). It offers more in-depth programmatic guidance on how to develop CSE programmes that are appropriate and safe for different groups of children and young people, especially those who are unlikely to be addressed in CSE programmes for children and young people generally.

Available in English and Spanish.

The global community has committed to eliminating mother-to-child transmission (EMTCT), also known as vertical transmission, of HIV and syphilis as a public health priority. In 2014 the World Health Organization (WHO) released the first edition of the Global guidance on criteria and processes for validation: elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis. In 2015 the Global Validation Advisory Committee for EMTCT was established and that same year the first country, Cuba, was validated. The second edition of the guidance, published in 2017, captured the learning from validation efforts, making it more relevant for high burden countries, expanding the capacity of maternal and child health services to address vertical transmission of communicable diseases.

This third version includes guidance for validation of elimination of vertical transmission of hepatitis B virus (HBV), within the Triple Elimination Initiative (EMTCT of HIV, syphilis and HBV).

In July 2015, the IATT hosted a webinar with WHO, PAHO and the Ministry of Health of Cuba to discuss the validation process for the dual elimination of MTCT of HIV and syphilis. A total of 68 participants joined the webinar from a range of countries including China, Ethiopia, DRC, Namibia and Nigeria. Additional downloads of the webinar presentations, virtual discussion summary and Q&A transcript can be found here: Cuba Validation on EMTCT of HIV & Syphilis (Jul 2015).

The paper quantifies the risk of early mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of HIV among adolescents enrolled in nationally representative MTCT surveillance studies in South Africa. The authors found that adolescent mothers have three times lower PMTCT uptake and three times higher early MTCT compared to adults.

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.

This article is part of the Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) ALL IN Blog Series on Rwanda's operational plan for adolescent HIV and sexual and reproductive health

The International HIV/AIDS Alliance published in May 2017 a good practice guide on Adolescent HIV programming. This guide contains information, strategies  and resources, including UNICEF materials, to help programmers meet good practice standards for HIV programming for adolescents. It can be used at any time in the programme cycle to assess good practice, and to help develop proposals and monitoring and evaluation frameworks. Click here to access the guide.

This publication is an update of the 2005 guidelines for measuring national HIV prevalence in population-based surveys of the UNAIDS/WHO Working Group on Global HIV/AIDS and STI Surveillance.

The purpose of the revised guidelines is to assist programme officers in monitoring the HIV epidemic and the impact of the country’s AIDS response by designing and implementing population-based surveys that include HIV infection, sexually transmitted infections, and other bloodborne biomarkers.