Adolescent and young key populations

UNICEF’s 2024 Global Snapshot, released for World AIDS Day, offers a concise yet critical overview of the global HIV and AIDS landscape, focusing on children, adolescents, and pregnant women. This year’s report highlights key data and insights, emphasizing the urgent need to eliminate vertical transmission of HIV and ensure universal access to testing and treatment for children and adolescents. Ending AIDS by 2030 is not just an achievable goal—it is a moral imperative to uphold the rights and dignity of every child and adolescent.

This year's World AIDS Day theme is "Take the rights path". For this occasion, UNICEF published the Eastern and Southern Africa Regional 2024 Snapshot, featuring a regional overview of HIV trends, including vertical transmission, testing, and treatment for children and adolescents, as well as gender disparities affecting adolescent girls and young women.

This status report shows how far we have come—and how much further we must go—if we hope to meet the global commitments to end AIDS in children. It offers a snapshot of global progress and permits an early assessment of the impact of the Global Alliance’s work. This report highlights the transformative work that is being undertaken in Global Alliance countries to accelerate gains towards ending AIDS in children, underscoring the urgent need to apply good practices, emerging innovations and critical lessons learned to overcome the barriers that slow progress.

For additional information, consult the joint press release and the video created for the report launch at AIDS 2024.

As part of the 2gether 4 SRHR joint UN programme, UNICEF ESARO in collaboration with Y+ Global and UNFPA ESARO, developed six key question and answer (Q&A) resource documents on HIV and SRH for adolescents and young people in ESA. The toolkit has been developed to assist country teams in improving knowledge and understanding, driving adolescent and youth engagement and behaviour change,​ and promoting uptake of services in ESA. The content has been developed with adolescents and young people. Part of a broader toolkit, the content is intended for adaptation and use across multiple SBC platforms, including digital approaches scripts for radio shows and peer counselling sessions.

Each Q&A has approximately 10 questions, and links to the other topic areas:

• Healthy relationships
• Staying safe
• Sex and other stuff
• All about HIV
• Living with HIV
• Being a young parent
• Understanding Puberty
• The HPV Vaccine
• Talking with Your Children

Click and watch on how to access and use the toolkit

Adolescents living with HIV (ALHIV) encounter diverse challenges in school settings that impact their well-being and academic performance. This UNICEF-supported study sought to delve into the viewpoints of teachers and administrators regarding the care and support accessible to ALHIV in schools in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania. 

Various forms of support for ALHIV in schools were identified. Schools had designated health teachers/matrons/ patrons responsible for addressing health-related issues, including those affecting ALHIV. Assistance for clinic visits and medication adherence was readily available. Peer clubs were established to combat stigma and discrimination while providing additional support. Nevertheless, challenges such as staff members’ limited knowledge and skills, reluctance to disclose, inadequate nutritional support, and insufficient backing from regional and district administrators persist.

The study also pinpointed areas for enhancement, such as capacity building for teachers and staff, bolstering support for disclosure, offering nutritious dietary options, reinforcing peer clubs, and fostering collaboration between the education and health sectors. These findings can inform the development of comprehensive interventions to support ALHIV in school settings better, ultimately advancing their well-being and academic achievements. 

Eastern and southern Africa (ESA) is the world’s most heavily HIV-impacted region, with adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) disproportionately affected. To support the scale-up of PrEP amongst AGYW in ESA, in September 2021 UNICEF and partners released the implementation brief “Improving the Quality of Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis Implementation for Adolescent Girls and Young Women in Eastern and Southern Africa,” highlighting considerations to help improve the quality and coverage of AGYW PrEP programming.

The PrEP landscape has evolved significantly in the three years since the original brief was released, both in scale and variety. This updated brief summarises the most recent evidence on AGYW PrEP provision, serving as a supplement to the original 2021 implementation brief.

Global initiatives are urging countries to prioritize quality as a way of reinforcing human rights-based approaches to health. Yet evidence from both high- and low-income countries shows that services for adolescents are highly fragmented, poorly coordinated and uneven in quality. Pockets of excellent practice exist, but, overall, services need significant improvement and should be brought into conformity with existing guidelines.

The WHO/UNAIDS global standards for quality health-care services for adolescents aim to assist policy-makers and health service planners to improve the quality of health-care services, so that adolescents find it easier to obtain the health services that they need to promote, protect, and improve their health and well-being, according to their needs. 

This publication presents global standards for quality health-care services for adolescents, as well as an implementation guide and monitoring tools.

This advocacy report discusses the HIV epidemic among young people in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, particularly among key populations. The report emphasizes the challenges faced in collecting HIV-related data and the need for comprehensive efforts to address the epidemic, including targeted prevention programmes, improved access to testing and treatment, and addressing social and structural factors. It also discusses the presence of punitive and obstructive laws that contribute to stigma and discrimination and calls for their removal or reform. The report advocates for increased investment in HIV programmes, improved access to sexual and reproductive health services, comprehensive sexuality education, and community engagement. It highlights the importance of community health systems, data collection, and involving young people in the development of HIV and other health programmes.  ​