Giving Compass' Take:

• The author discusses the biggest challenges working toward eliminating AIDS.  Additionally, she notes the current treatment plans that can be successful as long as healthcare workers address the challenges surrounding the disease and the communities who suffer the most. 

• One of the biggest challenges is stigma around HIV/AIDS and a solution is having mentor mothers who are HIV positive who help other women to receive treatment.  Can this program model be replicated in other countries? 

• Read about The Open Philanthropy Project and their focus areas for HIV/AIDS. 

According to UNAIDS, in 2016 (the latest year for which data is available), 36.7M people were living with HIV globally, and there were more than 1.8M new infections in that year alone. The disproportionately high rate of new infections among adolescent women and girls in Southern and Eastern Africa is concerning—women aged 15-24 made up 26 percent of all new infections in this region yet are only 10 percent of the population.

A key opportunity has emerged because of a move to a global protocol called “test and treat”—meaning that when people test HIV-positive, they are put on treatment for life immediately. Advances in medicine mean that most HIV-positive people need only a single daily pill to manage the disease, with very few side effects. If they adhere to this treatment regime, they usually achieve “viral suppression,” which means the level of the virus becomes so low that it is undetectable by a standard test.

Add to these challenges the fact that HIV-related stigma and gender inequality remains rife across many countries, and it is easy to see why some people either never start treatment or drop out soon afterward. In fact, across Eastern and Southern Africa, a quarter of all recently diagnosed HIV-positive people have either passed away or dropped out of care within 12 months of diagnosis.

At mothers2mothers, we think we’ve hit on one part of the solution. We employ HIV-positive women as frontline healthcare workers who serve their local communities – working both at healthcare facilities and by going door-to-door to meet with women and families at their homes. These “mentor mothers” enroll clients into care, help them navigate the often-confusing pathways to getting on treatment, and then follow up consistently to make sure their clients stay adherent and virally-suppressed.

Read the full article about ending AIDS by Kathrin Schmitz at Skoll Foundation