Shadow prevention reports highlight significant gaps

A man opens a female condom packet © Frontline AIDS/Peter Caton/2015

The Alliance unveiled their HIV prevention shadow reports yesterday at the International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam.

Patchy progress and weak engagement with community groups risks undermining efforts towards the HIV Prevention 2020 Roadmap, according to a series of shadow reports launched by the International HIV/AIDS Alliance at the 22nd International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam.

The reports aim to provide an assessment of how each country is progressing against the 10-point action plan outlined in the Global HIV Prevention 2020 Road Map. Focusing on six countries – India, Malawi, Nigeria, Uganda, Ukraine and Zimbabwe – the reports paint a picture of inconsistent engagement with civil society groups and little progress on the implementation of new accountability mechanisms that include community-based monitoring tools and initiatives. They also follow the recent publication by UNAIDS of the first progress report monitoring the implementation of the Road Map in May.

Launched by the Alliance during a satellite session at the 22nd International AIDS Conference, the reports come less than a week after UNAIDS warned that the HIV response is off-track, with new HIV infections in 2017 remaining stubbornly high at 1.8 million.

At a side event hosted by the Alliance, Dr. Rachel Baggaley (Coordinator of HIV testing and Prevention at the World Health Organisation), Dr. Nduku Kilonzo (Director of Kenya National AIDS Control Council), Annah Sango (National Coordinator for Zimbabwe Young Positives), Grace Kumwenda (Programme Manager at Pakachere, Malawi) and Josephine Dominic (Bar Hostess Empowerment and Support Programme, Kenya) debated the current state of HIV prevention and reflected on the reports’ findings.

It’s not an either/or choice. Treatment should be funded but prevention should also be funded equally. At the rate we are going now we will not meet the 2020 prevention targets. – Grace Kumwenda

The HIV Prevention 2020 Roadmap charts a course for countries to achieve the global HIV primary prevention goals. Its headline target is to reduce new HIV infections by 75% from 2010 figures, to less than 500,000 per year by 2020. As UNAIDS’ report showed last week, with 1.8 million new infections in 2017, the world is significantly off track.

Read the shadow reports

This article was written as the International HIV/AIDS Alliance, before we changed our name to Frontline AIDS.

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HIV preventionIndiaMalawiNigeriaUgandaUkraineZimbabwe