UN analysis urges integrating reproductive health and HIV prevention campaigns

Integrating providers of reproductive health services into the battle against HIV infection could bring the campaign to millions of women who are now at the centre of the global pandemic but fall through gaps in preventive efforts, according to a new United Nations analysis published today.

“Integrating HIV and other reproductive health services seems obvious, but is often not recognized at the programme and policy level,” said Purnima Mane, Director for Social Mobilization and Information for the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

“Policymakers and programme managers need to work together to find ways to deliver these inherently interrelated services more efficiently, more effectively – and in a more coordinated manner – to address the increasing global threat of HIV to women.”

The analysis, “The Role of Reproductive Health Providers in Preventing HIV,” is published jointly by The Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI), a United States non-profit organization, and UNAIDS, with the collaboration of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).

It calls for overcoming financial shortfalls and resistance to public acknowledgement of women’s and adolescents’ sexuality in order to help reproductive health providers reach their full potential in closing the gap in HIV prevention, noting that they already offer a wide range of services to millions of women and are thus a largely untapped source as front-line providers of HIV prevention services.

It stresses that they already have access to millions of high risk people, including reproductive age women, who account for nearly half of adults living with HIV worldwide; young people between 15 and 24, who account for half of all new cases of HIV; and expectant and new mothers, who account for 630,000 infants worldwide infected with HIV during their mother’s pregnancy, labour and delivery.

In addition to their ability to reach out to women, and increasingly to adolescents and men, the providers have the knowledge and skills upon which stepped-up interventions for HIV prevention could be built, it says.

Adequate resources are key to increasing their ability to offer three key HIV prevention services: HIV counselling and testing and condom promotion in a setting where many women and adolescents, in particular, are already comfortable; prevention, diagnosis and treatment of sexually transmitted infections that would otherwise increase the risk of HIV transmission; and assistance to HIV-positive women for the prevention of unwanted pregnancies, thus reducing the chances of transmission to infants.