Position Paper: Children and young women in eastern and southern Africa are key to meeting 2030 HIV targets: time to accelerate action

By Kaymarlin Govender, Patrick Nyamaruze, Richard G Cowden, Yogan Pillay, Linda-Gail Bekker

New HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths among children and adolescent girls and young women (aged 15–24 years) in eastern and southern Africa continue to occur at unacceptably high rates. The COVID-19 pandemic has also severely undermined ongoing initiatives for HIV prevention and treatment, threatening to set the region back further in its efforts to end AIDS by 2030. Major impediments exist to attaining the UNAIDS 2025 targets among children, adolescent girls, young women, young mothers living with HIV, and young female sex workers residing in eastern and southern Africa. Each population has specific but overlapping needs with regard to diagnosis and linkage to and retention in care. Urgent action is needed to intensify and improve programmes for HIV prevention and treatment, including sexual and reproductive health services for adolescent girls and young women, HIV-positive young mothers, and young female sex workers.

Check here for more details: file:///C:/Users/HP/Downloads/1-s2.0-S2352301823000127-main_%20children%20and%20HIV%20targets_Lancet%20HIV.pdf

Violence against primary school children with disabilities in Uganda: a cross-sectional study

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Devries 2014 Good Schools disability.pdf

150 million children live with disabilities globally, and a recent systematic review found 3 to 4 times the levels of violence versus non-disabled children in high income countries. However, almost nothing is known about violence against disabled children in lower income countries. This research aims to explore the prevalence, patterns and risk factors for physical, sexual and emotional violence among disabled children attending primary school in Luwero District, Uganda.

In Uganda, disabled girls are at particular risk of violence, notably sexual violence. Schools may be a promising venue for intervention delivery. Further research on the epidemiology and prevention of violence against disabled and non-disabled children in low income countries is urgently needed.

Devries et al.: Violence against primary school
children with disabilities in Uganda: a cross-sectional study. BMC Public
Health 2014 14:1017.

Comprehensive sexuality education: The challenges and opportunities of scaling-up

Comprehensive sexuality education:the challenges and opportunities of scaling-up.pdf

This report builds on a programme of work on sexuality education for young people initiated in 2008 by UNESCO. The report emphasizes the challenges for scaling-up in terms of integrating comprehensive sexuality education into the formal curricula of schools.

Despite significant investment and programmatic interventions, levels of HIV prevention knowledge among young people have changed relatively little. This is particularly the case in countries that are most affected by HIV and AIDS. Comprehensive sexuality education is a long way from being institutionalized in most low- and middle-income countries where the HIV epidemic poses a disproportionate burden. Even in countries with the highest HIV rates, there are relatively few examples of scaled-up, sustainable programmes within educational curricula. Existing generations of schoolchildren are not receiving the information they need for their healthy development. Unless things change, future cohorts of children will be similarly disadvantaged.

The report is informed by several other past and ongoing initiatives related to scaling up sexuality education, as well as drawing on case studies presented at the Bogota international consultation on sexuality education, convened by UNFPA in 2010.

It emphasizes the challenges for scaling-up in terms of integrating comprehensive sexuality education into the formal curricula of schools. It aims to:

• Provide conceptual and practical guidance on definitions and strategies of scaling-up, given the specificities of sexuality education.
• Illustrate good practice and pathways for successful scale-up in light of diverse contextual parameters.
• Provide some principles of scaling up sexuality education that are of relevance internationally.