HIV Prevention

Introduction

The Alliance promotes the necessity of taking a comprehensive approach to prevention that addresses both the proximal risks of infection through the promotion and support of behaviour change, as well as addressing the root causes of risk and vulnerability. These root causes include harmful sexual and gender norms and structural factors that fail to promote a legal and policy environment that fully supports the human rights of people living with HIV and those who are most at risk of infection.

Impact on communities

For every new person started on treatment, there are between 3 and 5 new HIV infections. Globally, access to, and funding of, prevention services is grossly inadequate. Lack of political will and human rights abuses continue to limit key populations to comprehensive prevention services.

The Alliance approach

Since its foundation, the Alliance has been a vanguard in promoting a public health approach based firmly within a human rights framework to addressing the needs of key population groups (sex workers, men-who-have-sex with men, IDU, PLHIV, children) who are particular affected by HIV but have limited access to appropriate prevention support services due to discrimination, gross human rights violations, illegality and social marginalisation.

Central to the Alliance’s approach to prevention is ensuring the active participation of those most at risk and affected in all stages of programme development and implementation. Our experience shows that this is essential in ensuring that the services and programmes developed are embraced and relevant to the populations for whom they are developed.

Globally, the Alliance is involved in prevention programming in many contexts and with at risk populations - sex workers, MSM, IDU, children, mobile populations, whole communities in countries with generalised epidemics, as well communities in post-conflict countries.

The Alliance endeavours at all times to be a learning organisation that critically reflects on new learning in order to adjust prevention strategies and also actively promotes its own experience in global prevention fora.

Achievements to date

Our achievements to date are:-

• The majority of Alliance programming centres on HIV prevention – almost 40% of all people reached in 2008 (900,000) were being provided with prevention services.
• 42 million condoms were distributed across the Alliance in 2008.
• From 2002-2006, the Alliance ran The Frontiers Prevention Project – a multi-country HIV-prevention-focused initiative in five low prevalence countries put at risk by the growing pandemic. Read more here (link to case study below)
• The Alliance published ”What’s preventing HIV prevention? Policy Statement to UNAIDS” in 2004 which contributed to the early stages of the process for developing a new global HIV prevention strategy.

Our partners

• UNAIDS Prevention Reference Group
• Sex Worker Networks
• Global MSM Forum
• GNP