Scientific Facts on AIDS

3.1 Has HIV Prevention improved?

Prevention programmes involve a series of services that aim to prevent HIV transmission through sexual intercourse, from mother to child, through injecting drug use, and through blood transfusions.

Such prevention services include for instance access to HIV counselling and testing, prevention education for young people, provision of condoms to those who are sexually active, programmes to reduce HIV-related stigma and discrimination, and treatment of other sexually transmitted diseases.

While in some countries HIV prevention services are much more widely available now than in 2001, they only reach a small minority of those in need, and a number of target groups are not being reached.

Programmes aimed at changing behaviour have succeeded in reducing the frequency of risky sexual behaviours. Countries that have lowered HIV incidence have benefited from the emergence of new sexual behaviour patterns – fewer commercial sex transactions in Cambodia and Thailand, delayed sexual debut in Zimbabwe, increasing emphasis on monogamy in Uganda and an increase in condom use overall.

Most countries, however, have missed the target of ensuring that 90% of young people have access to critical HIV prevention services by 2005. In fact, less than 50% of young people in the 18 countries surveyed were well informed about AIDS prevention and transmission.

The global supply of condoms by the public sector covers less than half the present need and three times more funding is required for this purpose.

More than 340 million people contract a curable sexually transmitted infection each year and women are especially vulnerable. Despite the fact that untreated sexually transmitted infections greatly increase the risk of HIV transmission, diagnosis and treatment of sexually transmitted infections and HIV are not very coordinated.

Though prevention strategies are cost-effective, there are disturbing signs that some countries are reducing their HIV prevention budgets.

Unsafe medical injections and contaminated blood transfusions are still cause for concern, and sound infection control practices should be promoted in health-care settings