AfNHi and AWPCAB

HIV Prevention

Everyone deserves access to the full range of HIV prevention options

Overview

WACI Health’s HIV prevention work makes sure that African communities, especially women and girls, shape decisions on HIV prevention research, policy and funding.

Nearly two in three of the world’s 40.8 million people living with HIV are in sub-Saharan Africa, and every week around 3,300 adolescent girls and young women in the region acquire HIV, according to UNAIDS. The tools to prevent it exist, from daily oral PrEP to the dapivirine vaginal ring and long-acting injectables such as cabotegravir and lenacapavir. Whether these options reach communities depends on price, supply, rights and funding, and on whether the people most affected help decide how they are introduced.

Africa Free of New HIV Infections (AfNHi), a network of African HIV prevention research advocates that WACI Health helped establish, works to influence and fast-track the biomedical HIV prevention research agenda on the continent through local ownership and indigenous strategies, advocating both for the use of existing HIV prevention tools and for the development of new tools and technologies.

The African Women Prevention Community Accountability Board (AWPCAB) is a collective of African women who ensure the experiences and priorities of women shape every decision about prevention products, programmes, and investments on the continent. It launched the HIV Prevention Choice Manifesto for Women and Girls in Africa, which calls for sustained political and financial commitment to the full range of HIV prevention options and guides the work of both networks.

HIV Prevention

Purpose

01 Secure equitable, affordable access to the full range of prevention options for women, girls and key populations, including long-acting options.
02 Support African women and girls in decision-making roles in HIV prevention research, policy and funding, from the design of trials to the introduction of new products.
03 Hold governments, funders and manufacturers to their commitments on prevention choice, including those made under the Choice Manifesto.
04 Push for sustainable domestic financing for HIV prevention and prevention research.

HIV Prevention

What We Do

AfNHi advances biomedical HIV prevention through movement building, research advocacy, and convenings such as the Biomedical HIV Prevention Forum (BHPF). The forum brings researchers, policymakers, advocates, young people and affected communities together on the prevention pipeline, financing and research ethics.

Within AWPCAB, WACI Health leads communications, delivering the Choice Manifesto principles to governments, funders and manufacturers. AWPCAB speaks out at the moments that decide access, such as new product launches and price changes, and works with regional networks of people living with HIV, sex workers and young people to close access gaps.

Young people are at the centre of both networks. WACI Health is a delivery partner in AWPCAB’s HIV Prevention in Action Academy, which trains young champions in five countries in eastern and southern Africa to lead prevention conversations in schools, clinics and communities. AfNHi’s mentorship programme, part of WACI Health’s youth leadership work, pairs young advocates with experienced mentors.

WACI Health also connects HIV prevention to wider health systems and rights. Through the Bridge for Better Health initiative, it works with partners to bring sexual and reproductive health and rights and HIV prevention into national plans for universal health coverage. Through the Africa Unite Solidarity Campaign, it challenges the punitive laws that keep key populations away from prevention services.