This Best Practice Case Study captures lessons learned, keys to success, and challenges that must be met if there is to be optimal access to treatment and care for UN staff and their dependents. It describes UN workplace programmes in Cambodia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Rwanda where multi-disciplinary teams are discovering the power of leadership and the value of multidisciplinary interagency approaches.

Growing evidence shows that getting and keeping young people in school, particularly girls, dramatically lowers their vulnerability to HIV. By itself, merely attending primary school makes young people significantly less likely to contract HIV. When young people stay in school through the secondary level, education’s protective effect against HIV is even more pronounced. This is especially true for girls who, with each additional year of education, gain greater independence, are better equipped to make decisions affecting their sexual lives, and have higher income earning potential – all of which help them stay safe from HIV.

This executive summary of the 2006 Report on the global AIDS epidemic provides information on the latest developments in the AIDS epidemic and the AIDS response. The special UNAIDS 10th anniversary edition of the report presents country profiles and estimates of the epidemic’s scope and human toll.

The Global Coalition on Women and AIDS was launched by UNAIDS in 2004 to respond to the increasing feminization of the HIV epidemic and a growing concern that existing AIDS strategies did not adequately address women’s needs. A loose alliance of civil society groups, networks of women living with HIV and United Nations agencies, the Coalition works at global and national levels to advocate for improved AIDS programming for women and girls. It focuses on several key issues: preventing new HIV infections by improving access to reproductive health care; promoting equitable access to HIV care and
treatment; ensuring universal access to education; securing women's property and inheritance rights; reducing violence against women; ensuring that women’s care work is properly supported; advocating for increased research and funding for female-controlled HIV prevention methods; promoting women's leadership in the AIDS response.

The aim of this study is to describe the experiences of and challenges faced by five nongovernmental organizations in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, which developed effective practices and implemented promising HIV and sexually transmitted infection prevention programmes for sex workers and their clients. The programmes’ key objective was to decrease sex workers’ vulnerability by improving their overall well being and supporting their empowerment. All organizations operate in low-resource settings and their experiences can be helpful in initiating and moving forward similar projects.

HIV/AIDS: A unique global threat.

Women account for nearly half of HIV infections worldwide
and almost two-thirds of those among young people, with
female infections rising in almost every region. Yet twenty-five years into the global AIDS epidemic, there is still no widely available technology that women can both initiate and control to protect themselves from HIV.

Opportunities for Scaling Up the Response to HIV at Country Level. Guidance Note.

Cover pictures and other illustrations: UNAIDS / Ruth Evans
UNAIDS/06.22E (English original, June 2006)

This Best Practice report shows how the power of working people can be harnessed in the response to AIDS. Eleven case studies from different settings show how trade unions are mounting bold, imaginative responses to HIV in the workplace: challenging stigma and discrimination, addressing the factors that increase vulnerability and risk, educating their members on HIV transmission prevention, providing care and treatment, and building worldwide coalitions that campaign for more to be done to tackle the disease. The report contains a wealth of practical experience that trade unions, employers, governments and nongovernmental organizations can draw on when developing workplace responses to AIDS.