PREVENTION

At IDI, HIV prevention is central to all clinical activities. Our prevention activities are mainly targeted at people living with HIV, using the concept of prevention with positives. The underlying strategy is to increase the number of individuals who are aware of their serostatus and target HIV-positive individuals and their partners with interventions that effectively reduce the likelihood of virus transmission. This strategy is based on the observation that most HIV infections occur in settings where the majority (80%) of HIV-infected individuals are unaware of their status.

So, we:

• Identify HIV discordant couples, and help them to maintain their discordant status.
• Integrate sexual and reproductive health activities into all clinical care, including PMTCT, providing more contraceptive choices, prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and screening for cervical cancer.
• Prevent the onset of opportunistic infections (secondary prevention) among those already living with HIV through the provision of basic care kits and the management of opportunistic infections.
• Train and enable people living with HIV to support HIV prevention through behaviour change communication and the provision of peer support and counselling and the provision of peer support and counselling.
• Focus on young adults, as particularly high-risk group for acquiring or transmitting the HIV.
• Provide antiretroviral therapy (ART) for as many people as possible—prevention through treatment.
• Improve and maintain HIV/AIDS skills, including those related to prevention, in the health workforce.
• Include sexual and reproductive health and HIV/opportunistic infections prevention as research focal areas.