Programme

There is a growing body of evidence that suggests that social protection can reduce the risk of HIV infection and poor treatment outcomes by addressing some of the key drivers of HIV among children, adolescents and women, such as poverty, gender inequality, and lack of access to education or ability to stay in school.  

Access to diagnostics to determine HIV infection is one of the major bottlenecks to timely treatment initiation in children and adults. Diagnostics for CD4 staging and monitoring, early infant diagnosis (EID) and viral load (VL) screening to monitor viral suppression have been historically offered using complex technologies, requiring test results to be sent away to central laboratories. Some HIV positive clients can wait for weeks or even months to receive test samples, contributing to loss to follow-up and causing delays that can have serious short-term and long-term impacts.

Access to lifelong antiretroviral therapy (ART) for pregnant women living with HIV has increased globally, but only two thirds of the estimated 150,000 million infants born to mothers living with HIV annually are tested within two months of birth. And among the 1.7 million children (aged 0–14 years) living with HIV, slightly more than half (54 per cent in 2020) are on treatment. This relatively poor access to testing and treatment has deadly consequences.