YOU ARE HERE:
Linking prevention and care
Prevention, care and impact mitigation initiatives must all be scaled up and better integrated
To download this policy statement as a PDF file, click here.
The International HIV/AIDS Alliance works with communities in developing countries to prevent the spread of HIV, support and care for those infected and ease the impact of HIV on families and communities. While prevention must be the mainstay of our global response,care and impact alleviation are both essential in and of themselves and are crucial for effective prevention.
Since its establishment in 1993, the Alliance has provided both financial and technical support to over 1,500 HIV/AIDS projects and has worked with NGOs and CBOs from over 40 countries. This experience reveals that:
The Alliance believes that the United Nations and its Member States should:
The Alliance’s contribution is and will continue to be:
A home care programme in Cambodia:
The Government of Cambodia and the Khmer HIV/AIDS NGO Alliance (KHANA) jointly manage a home care programme for people with HIV/AIDS. Although the programme was established to focus on care and support needs, an external evaluation supported by the International HIV/AIDS Alliance demonstrated the very real linkages between care, impact mitigation and prevention.
For example, the evaluation revealed that 27% of people living with AIDS benefiting from the programme had started using condoms as a result of the care programme, and many others were either already using condoms or no longer involved in sexual relations. A 23 year old female sex worker reported: "After knowing that I am infected, I always ask all my clients to wear a condom."
Interviewing community leaders in Phnom Penh, 87% specifically mentioned that the home care teams were helping to increase understanding of preventive measures. A village headman from Cham Carmon commented: "People didn't believe we had AIDS here. Now they are more brave in talking about condoms
and using them. Before, their knowledge about AIDS was just from television. The home care teams have brought them the reality."
The children of people living with AIDS are also benefiting from the home care initiative. A 36 year old widow in Tonlé Bassac told the evaluators: "The home care team help me continue with my business of selling food; before (they started visiting), I couldn't even get out of bed. Without the home care team, my children would have to leave school to look after me."
The International HIV/AIDS Alliance
mailto:mail@aidsalliance.org
www.aidsalliance.org
www.aidsmap.com
May 2001
To download this policy statement as a PDF file, click here.
The International HIV/AIDS Alliance works with communities in developing countries to prevent the spread of HIV, support and care for those infected and ease the impact of HIV on families and communities. While prevention must be the mainstay of our global response,care and impact alleviation are both essential in and of themselves and are crucial for effective prevention.
Since its establishment in 1993, the Alliance has provided both financial and technical support to over 1,500 HIV/AIDS projects and has worked with NGOs and CBOs from over 40 countries. This experience reveals that:
- Providing care and support to people with HIV/AIDS in developing countries can increase condom use, decrease risk behaviour and increase disclosure of HIV status to partners, even if prevention promotion is not included in the care programme. All these positive results can be further increased by explicitly addressing prevention alongside care.
- Providing care and support to people with HIV/AIDS also increases planning and provision for children affected by HIV/AIDS, increases children’s understanding of HIV/AIDS, and increases the number of orphans who are immediately placed in a loving and supportive environment after their parents die.
- Action to alleviate the impact of HIV/AIDS, such as caring for orphans and vulnerable children, in turn contributes to both prevention and care. One of the most effective methods to mobilise community action on all aspects of HIV/AIDS is to focus on the needs of affected children.
- Prevention efforts that ignore the needs and priorities of people living with and affected by HIV/AIDS are unlikely to be successful. Involving people living with HIV/AIDS in prevention campaigns both increases safe behaviour by the people with HIV/AIDS themselves and more effectively catalyses safe behaviour among people who are not infected.
- Challenging stigma and discrimination is a key strategy that effectively reinforces prevention efforts, underpins care and support and facilitates impact alleviation.
- Ultimately, the focus of prevention, care and impact mitigation work is mostly with individuals, families and their communities. Community mobilisation and support is thus central to effective responses to HIV/AIDS and to effective linkages among these issues.
The Alliance believes that the United Nations and its Member States should:
- Explicitly commit to funding and supporting each of HIV prevention, HIV/AIDS care and HIV/AIDS impact alleviation through domestic investments and international development assistance; success in each will reinforce the others.
- Increasingly support the development and implementation of integrated prevention, care and impact alleviation efforts delivered at the community level.
- Call for special programme and policy efforts focused on and involving children orphaned by AIDS, who need ongoing love and support until their adult years, may themselves need HIV/AIDS care, or otherwise may be particularly vulnerable to HIV infection.
The Alliance’s contribution is and will continue to be:
- To support NGOs, CBOs and affected communities to advocate for comprehensive and integrated responses to HIV/AIDS, recognising that prevention, care and impact alleviation are all essential and mutually reinforcing.
- To work with NGOs and CBOs in particular countries to support, enhance and expand community level responses to AIDS, emphasising the critical linkages between prevention, care and impact alleviation.
- To work with partners to develop, test and disseminate lessons about new community approaches that effectively address the interaction between prevention, care and impact alleviation.
- To continue to make a special ongoing effort to involve people living with HIV/AIDS and children affected by HIV/AIDS in our work.
A home care programme in Cambodia:
The Government of Cambodia and the Khmer HIV/AIDS NGO Alliance (KHANA) jointly manage a home care programme for people with HIV/AIDS. Although the programme was established to focus on care and support needs, an external evaluation supported by the International HIV/AIDS Alliance demonstrated the very real linkages between care, impact mitigation and prevention.
For example, the evaluation revealed that 27% of people living with AIDS benefiting from the programme had started using condoms as a result of the care programme, and many others were either already using condoms or no longer involved in sexual relations. A 23 year old female sex worker reported: "After knowing that I am infected, I always ask all my clients to wear a condom."
Interviewing community leaders in Phnom Penh, 87% specifically mentioned that the home care teams were helping to increase understanding of preventive measures. A village headman from Cham Carmon commented: "People didn't believe we had AIDS here. Now they are more brave in talking about condoms
and using them. Before, their knowledge about AIDS was just from television. The home care teams have brought them the reality."
The children of people living with AIDS are also benefiting from the home care initiative. A 36 year old widow in Tonlé Bassac told the evaluators: "The home care team help me continue with my business of selling food; before (they started visiting), I couldn't even get out of bed. Without the home care team, my children would have to leave school to look after me."
The International HIV/AIDS Alliance
mailto:mail@aidsalliance.org
www.aidsalliance.org
www.aidsmap.com
May 2001