Advocates supports a global HIV prevention strategy that is comprehensive, evidence-based and provides young people with accurate information about how to protect themselves from contracting HIV. For the first time, a generation of young people is coming of sexual and reproductive age with no experience in a world before HIV/AIDS. For those who can access anti-retroviral medications, HIV has been transformed from a virtual death sentences to a chronic illness. However new infections, especially among young people, continue to outpace the rate of new patients accessing antiretroviral therapy. The need for increased emphasis on sound, evidence-based prevention policy in the global response to AIDS has never been so clear.

End the HIV Travel Ban

For over 20 years, the United States has included HIV on its list of “communicable diseases of public health significance,” which automatically denies infected individuals entry into the United States. Congress originally passed this law at a time when there was only limited understanding of how HIV was transmitted and homosexuality was still grounds for inadmissibility to the United States. Over the past 20 years, the ban has discriminated and stigmatized people living with HIV and AIDS.  

Update: Victory!  In July, 2008, Congress took the first step towards eliminating this discriminatory ban by including language lifting the statutory ban in the reauthorization of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.   In October, 2009, President Obama announced that the travel ban would end in January 2010.

Draft new, evidence-based PEPFAR Guidance

During the 110th Congress, the Tom Lantos and Henry J. Hyde United States Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Reauthorization Act of 2008 [P.L. 110-293] reauthorized the Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) with a $48 million funding level over five years. The new Global AIDS Coordinator must develop guidance for the distribution of the funding to targeted countries. Guidance for the new five-year PEPFAR plan must confront the social and economic complexities that drive the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

In the past, the Guidance has ignored evidence-based prevention strategies in favor of ideological “abstinence-until-marriage and be faithful” policies that segment the various populations based on age and marital status. Young people felt the brunt of this ideological approach in that they were denied basic information about how condoms could help protect them from contracting HIV and other STIs. This segmentation has also meant that countries receiving aid were unable to develop and implement comprehensive HIV prevention programs that they felt best met the needs of their population. The new Guidance must be drafted in consultation with affected countries so that the funds provided can have the greatest impact in stopping the spread of HIV.

Update: In December of 2009, the Office of Global AIDS Coordinator (OGAC) released a new five-year strategy for PEPFAR’s second phase. While this strategy called for comprehensive and correct knowledge of HIV transmission among youth, new Country Operational Plan guidance for 2011 still segments information with comprehensive approaches limited to sexually active or high-risk youth.

For more information, please see “Investing in Young People: Solving the Sustainability Challenge in PEPFAR” and “Improving U.S. Global HIV Prevention for Youth: A Critique of the Office of Global AIDS Coordinator’s ABC Guidance.”