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HOME: POPULATION ISSUES: ASSISTING IN EMERGENCIES: Preventing HIV/AIDS and other STIs
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Preventing HIV/AIDS and Other Sexually-Transmitted Infections

All sexually-transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS, thrive under crisis conditions, which coincide with limited access to the means of prevention, treatment and care.

More than 95 per cent of all people with HIV live in developing countries. Conditions in emergencies increase the risk of exposure even further, including:

  • Large movements of people

  • Break-up of stable relationships along with the disintegration of community and family life

  • Disruption of social norms governing sexual behaviour

  • Coercion of women and adolescent girls and boys to exchange sex for food, shelter, income and protection

  • Mixing of populations with higher rates of HIV infection

  • Camp conditions are comparable to large urban settings, which increase risk

HIV/AIDS and conflict

HIV/AIDS not only thrives in situations of emergency and conflict; it contributes to them. When it adopted Resolution 1308 in July 2000, the UN Security Council:

”recognized that the HIV/AIDS pandemic is also exacerbated by conditions of violence and instability, which increases the risk of exposure to the disease through large movements of people, widespread uncertainty over conditions, and reduced access to medical care.”

The Security Council requested that training for HIV/AIDS prevention be provided for peacekeeping personnel. UNFPA works with UNAIDS and other partners to help develop strategies for education, prevention, voluntary and confidential testing and counselling, and treatment – for peacekeepers, soldiers and police, and other uniformed personnel.

Preventing HIV infection begins with efforts to provide condoms, raise awareness and enforce universal precautions – including conditions for safe blood transfusion – in health care settings. UNFPA and its partners work to reduce vulnerability to HIV infection among refugees and displaced people, and others affected by natural disaster or conflict, by:

  • Combatting ignorance through education and information

  • Raising awareness and providing training on gender issues, universal precautions and HIV/AIDS prevention

  • Providing user-friendly reproductive health services, particularly for women and adolescents, which offer voluntary testing and counselling

  • Alerting pregnant women to the risk of mother-to-child transmission

  • Engaging men as partners in fighting HIV/AIDS by reducing risky sexual and drug-taking behaviour, ending violence against women and practising safer sexual behaviour

  • Supporting the creation of income-generating opportunities for women

  • Assessing crisis situations, noting prevalence, risk areas and cultural and religious beliefs, so that appropriate services can be established

Amid the stress and hardship of an emergency, shame, social stigma and fear of abandonment make life more difficult for people living with HIV/AIDS. Comprehensive care for HIV/AIDS acknowledges the social and emotional impact of infection. As a cosponsor of the Joint UN Programme on AIDS (UNAIDS), UNFPA advocates HIV/AIDS prevention as an integral part of reproductive health information and services.


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