Ahead of a Fast-Track cities event to take place in June at the 2016 United Nations General Assembly High-Level Meeting on Ending AIDS, the Mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, has committed the city to the UNAIDS Fast-Track approach to end the AIDS epidemic.

The Fast-Track cities event in New York, United States of America, on 6 June will highlight the leadership role of cities in the AIDS response and showcase urban innovations to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, including the target of ending the AIDS epidemic.

There are around 223 000 people living with HIV in Ukraine, with about 14 000 new HIV infections in 2014. Around one in five adults living with HIV has access to antiretroviral therapy.

Participants at the event at which the commitment to the Fast-Track approach was made included Ukraine’s Minister of Health, Alexander Kvitashvili, the United States’ Ambassador, Geoffrey R. Pyatt, France’s Ambassador, Isabelle Dumont, and the Executive Director of the Kyiv Network of People Living with HIV, Lada Bulah.

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In collaboration with UNAIDS and other partners, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and IRTG, a Global Network of Trans Women and HIV, have released a new publication today entitled Implementing comprehensive HIV and STI programmes with transgender people: practical guidance for collaborative interventions. The publication presents concrete steps that public health officials, health workers and nongovernmental organizations can adopt to implement HIV and sexually transmitted infection (STI) programmes with transgender people.

Topics covered in the publication include community empowerment and human rights, addressing violence, stigma and discrimination, and delivering transgender-competent services, especially for HIV and STI prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care. The publication also covers community-led outreach, safe spaces and the use of information and communications technology in service delivery. It describes how to manage programmes and build the capacity of organizations led by transgender people and shows how services can be designed and implemented to be acceptable and accessible to transgender women. Wherever possible, it gives particular attention to programmes run by transgender organizations.

The publication was developed in collaboration with transgender people and advocates, service providers, researchers, government officials and representatives of nongovernmental organizations from all over the world. UNDP and IRTG coordinated its production, with the support of the United Nations Population Fund, the University of California, San Francisco, Center of Excellence for Transgender Health, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the World Health Organization, the United States Agency for International Development, the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and UNAIDS.

The document is based on recommendations included in the Consolidated guidelines on HIV prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care for key populations, published in 2014 by the World Health Organization.

Transgender women continue to be heavily affected by HIV, being 49 times more likely to become infected with HIV than non-transgender adults.

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Guinea’s health system was devastated by the Ebola outbreak that swept through the country in late 2014 and early 2015. More than 11 300 people died in Guinea and in neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone, which are slowly recovering from the crisis.

During a meeting with Guinea’s President, Alpha Condé, on 30 March, UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé praised the efforts undertaken by the government and its partners to respond to the crisis and contain the spread of the Ebola virus. Mr. Sidibé said that the AIDS epidemic and Ebola outbreak were similar in many ways, from the pervasive stigma and discrimination faced by people affected to the medical challenges posed. He also commended the government for its continued commitment to end the AIDS epidemic and discussed its plans to strengthen domestic investment in HIV services and programmes throughout the country.

In meetings with the Prime Minister, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Health held during his three-day visit to the country, Mr Sidibé stressed the importance of strong and sustained investment to end the AIDS epidemic. With the First Lady of Guinea, Djene Kaba Condé, he spoke about maternal and child health and the measures required to ensure all babies are born free of HIV and that their mothers stay healthy.

Guinea offers antiretroviral treatment to all people living with HIV free-of-charge. Coverage in 2014 was estimated at 27% among 120 000 people living with HIV. 

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UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé and the President of the Russian Olympic Committee and First Deputy Chairman of the Russian State Duma, Alexander Zhukov, signed an agreement on 23 March to join forces to accelerate the global goal of ending the AIDS epidemic. The memorandum of understanding was signed on the sidelines of the fifth Eastern Europe and Central Asia AIDS Conference, being held in Moscow, Russian Federation.

The memorandum of understanding commits UNAIDS and the Russian Olympic Committee to work together to raise HIV awareness among athletes and sports fans, promote access to HIV treatment and reduce the health, social and economic impact of the AIDS epidemic. The programme will also involve addressing stigma and discrimination affecting people living with HIV, including athletes.

UNAIDS and the Russian Olympic Committee will exchange and share know-how and will involve athletes, sports associations and nongovernmental organizations in HIV prevention and awareness efforts at the national and community levels. They will also cooperate in running media campaigns and other HIV-related programmes with athletes, coaches and other opinion leaders from the sports community in the Russian Federation and internationally, particularly in eastern Europe and central Asia.

UNAIDS has been working in partnership with the International Olympic Committee on AIDS awareness and HIV prevention since 2004.

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At a panel discussion held during the fifty-ninth session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, being held from 14 to 22 March in Vienna, Austria, representatives of the European Union, the African Union, UNAIDS and civil society have stressed the importance of adopting a harm reduction approach to ensure better health and social results for people who inject drugs.

The event, "Promoting health, human rights and development through a harm reduction approach", took place a month ahead of the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on the World Drug Problem, to be held in New York, United States of America, which will adopt a new outcome document to help set the future direction of global drugs policy. Participants at the event in Vienna, who included UNAIDS Deputy Executive Director Luiz Loures, agreed that the UNGASS outcome document must include strong commitments to harm reduction strategies at the global, regional and national levels.

Panellists also underlined that the human rights of drug users must be at the centre of prevention and treatment efforts and that drug users must have a central role in developing harm reduction policies. Globally, the estimated number of people who inject drugs is 12.7 million, of whom 13% are living with HIV.

Joining Mr Loures on the panel were Martin van Rijn, Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport of the Netherlands, Hendrietta Ipeleng Bogopane-Zulu, Deputy Minister of Social Development of South Africa, and Oanh Thi Hai Khuat, Executive Director of the Center for Supporting Community Development Initiatives, Viet Nam. The discussion was moderated by Louise Van Deth of Stop AIDS Now!     

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The Chinese news agency Xinhua and UNAIDS have renewed their partnership for the AIDS response through a two-year extension of their memorandum of understanding. The agreement was signed during a meeting between UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé and Xinhua’s President Cai Mingzhao at UNAIDS headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, on 18 March.

Mr Sidibé thanked Xinhua for its support of UNAIDS and highlighted the importance of strong public-private partnerships to reach millions of people with life-saving information.

Working together is key, said Mr Cai, who reiterated Xinhua’s commitment to raising awareness and advocating around key issues related to ending the AIDS epidemic in China and globally. 

The UNAIDS–Xinhua memorandum of understanding was first signed in September 2011. Efforts carried out during the past years include global media campaigns to promote public awareness of HIV and support for World AIDS Day activities. The current agreement includes showcasing UNAIDS during the United Nations General Assembly High-Level Meeting on Ending AIDS in June on a giant electronic screen in Times Square, New York, United States of America. In addition, Xinhua will work with UNAIDS to publish and distribute a children’s book in China.

Xinhua is the world’s largest news agency, with more than 170 offices overseas and 31 domestic bureaus.

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Sexual violence is a global problem. An estimated one in three women has experienced physical and/or sexual violence, and 120 million girls worldwide experienced forced sexual intercourse before their 18th birthday. Moreover, in high HIV prevalence settings women who experience intimate partner violence are 50% more likely to acquire HIV than other women.

Access to post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) in the event of sexual violence, rape or unprotected sexual intercourse within 72 hours can reduce the risk of HIV infection by more than 80%. However, PEP alone is not enough and needs to be part of a package that includes action to address sexually transmitted infections, pregnancy, physical injury, mental illness and access to justice and legal protection.

Supporting people throughout their recovery, including in adhering to the full 28-day course of antiretroviral medicines that needs to be taken for PEP to be effective, is critical. However, people still face many barriers to freely accessing quality services, including stigma and discrimination in health-care settings.

On 16 March, Together for Girls, the World Health Organization and UNAIDS hosted a side event on the margins of the sixtieth session of the Commission on the Status of Women to promote the Every Hour Matters campaign, which will increase awareness of the importance of rapid access to comprehensive post-rape care.

Health-care workers, uniformed services, peacekeepers and others involved in post-rape care must be trained in gender-sensitive methods of relating to people who have experienced sexual violence and to deliver care without judgement and free of discrimination.

Reducing gender-based violence to lessen the risk of acquiring HIV and its impact is at the core of the UNAIDS 2016–2021 Strategy. The United Nations General Assembly High-Level Meeting on Ending AIDS, to be held in June, and the accompanying Political Declaration on AIDS are a critical opportunity to ensure that the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and girls are promoted and their right to live in a safe environment free from violence is assured.

Together for Girls is a global public–private partnership dedicated to ending violence against children, with a focus on sexual violence. To address this human rights violation and public health problem, Together for Girls brings together the expertise and resources of many organizations working in development, public health and children’s and women’s rights to collaborate with national governments and civil society.

For more information on the campaign, see the Together for Girls website at http://www.togetherforgirls.org/every-hour-matters/.

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The Government of Malawi and the United Nations Children’s Fund are testing the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, or drones) to explore cost-effective ways of reducing waiting times for HIV testing of infants. UAVs have the potential to cut waiting times dramatically and if the tests are successful they will be integrated into the health system alongside the use of other types of transport and other new technologies.

It currently takes an average of 11 days to transport samples from health centres to a testing laboratory, and up to eight weeks for the results to be returned. This means that mothers could be waiting for as long as three months to receive a test result for their children. The longer the delay between tests and results, the higher the loss to follow-up of children living with HIV.

UAVs have been used in the past for surveillance and assessments of disaster, but this is the first known use of UAVs on the continent for the improvement of HIV services.

The first successful test flight completed a 10 km route from a community health centre to the Kamuzu Central Hospital laboratory in Lilongwe. The test flights, which are assessing viability, including costs and safety, will continue until 18 March.

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