Scaling up HIV Interventions Through AIDSFree
Highlights
- Countries with high HIV burdens need targeted, proven interventions to prevent HIV’s spread.
- AIDSFree Project supports the scale-upof high-impact HIV interventions
- Abt’s work in Namibia has resulted in 44,260 VMMCs since 2015.
In 2011, the United States renewed its commitment to an AIDS-free generation and designed a four-pronged road approach to achieve this goal: saving lives, smart investments, shared responsibility and driving results with science. To reach this attainable but ambitious goal would require technical agility, stakeholder coordination and capacity building, strengthening health systems, and testing and scaling up proven HIV prevention interventions.
Abt Associates, a sub-contractor to JSI, has supported countries’ public and private health sectors to implement, scale up and continuously improve the quality of high-impact interventions to prevent and treat HIV. The efforts include:
- Expanding prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) services through the private sector in Zimbabwe.
- Scaling up voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) through the private sector in Namibia.
- Expanding pediatric treatment in Kenya.
- Assessing the willingness to pay for condoms in five African countries.
- Creating a handbook on partner notification.
- Assessing the cost effectiveness of PMTCT services provided through civil society organizations in Lesotho.
In Namibia, in particular, Abt is increasing the demand for—and strengthening the quality—of VMMC services, which reduces female-to-male HIV transmission by up to 60 percent. Through our leadership there, 44,260 males were circumcised, resulting in 727 new HIV infections averted since 2015. We’re working with the government of the Republic of Namibia and the Ministry of Health and Social Services to sustain these and other improvements, which include plans for financial sustainability and affordable, expanded access to VMMC services irrespective of insurance status.