Improving the Quality of PrEP Implementation for Adolescent Girls and Young Women
An implementation brief to support programming in Eastern and Southern Africa
Highlights
Adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) remain disproportionately affected by HIV in Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA), with 26 per cent of new infections attributed to this population. AGYW face many personal, social and structural barriers to access, uptake and use of traditional HIV prevention methods. Oral Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) is proven to be highly effective as an additional prevention choice for reducing the risk of HIV acquisition, including for AGYW. Successful uptake and adherence to PrEP is critical in its effectiveness as an HIV prevention method, however, the current demand for PrEP by AGYW is low with suboptimal adherence.
Within the ESA region, there is currently great impetus to address these challenges and scale up PrEP for AGYW. A critical aspect of this is to leverage the learnings and evidence from implementation of how to improve the demand and quality of PrEP programming for this population. Improving the Quality of Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis Implementation for Adolescent Girls and Young Women in Eastern and Southern Africa examines the current efforts in the region to accelerate and scale up evidence-based PrEP delivery platforms. The implementation brief provides current knowledge and builds on WHO guidance to provide key considerations for implementation, including driving demand and improving quality, as well as focus on wider combination prevention and integration agendas.
Evidence update 2024
Over the past three years, the PrEP landscape has evolved significantly including for AGYW in ESA who continue to be disproportionately affected by HIV. The evidence update titled: Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis and Adolescent Girls and Young Women in Eastern and Southern Africa: The latest insights, aims to enhance the quality and coverage of PrEP programming for AGYW. The brief summarizes the most recent evidence on AGYW PrEP provision and serves as a supplement to the original 2021 implementation brief.
