Prevention

Although HIV prevention, care and treatment are all critically important in ensuring the health of people living in Sub Saharan Africa, a project that attempts to accomplish everything is likely to accomplish very little. To succeed, the Champions have a highly defined purpose and focus on HIV prevention.

Why prevention? For every patient who began antiretroviral therapy (ART) in 2006, six other individuals became infected with HIV. If current trends continue, it is projected that 60 million more HIV infections will occur by 2015. A strategy that focuses on prevention targets the underlying causes of the epidemic and therefore has the greatest potential to reduce the scope of the problem. Furthermore, effective prevention will lessen the need for ART over the long term.

Multi-pronged prevention programs have been shown to be more highly effective than any single solution. The Champions, therefore, advocate in Sub Sahara Africa for appropriate prevention strategies that include:

• Behavior change programs to reduce multiple concurrent sexual partnerships and increase condom use
• Biomedical strategies such as male circumcision and prevention of mother-to-child transmission
• Mechanisms for national authorities and their partners to monitor where, among whom and why new HIV infections are occurring (i.e. Know Your Epidemic)
• An environment that respects social justice and human rights

The following websites provide information on HIV prevention that is of potential interest for health programme managers and policy makers.

• AEGIS
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
• The Global Fund
• Global Health Council
• HIV This Week
• National Institutes of Health (NIH – United States)
• The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS)
• World Health Organization (WHO)
• World Bank

Prevention Resources:

• Global HIV Prevention Working Group Report. Bringing HIV Prevention to Scale: An Urgent Global Priority
• Global HIV Prevention Working Group. Behavior Change and HIV Prevention:
  (Re)Considerations for the 21st Century

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