“For every person who began antiretroviral therapy in 2006, six people were newly infected,” according to a new report from the Global HIV Prevention Working Group.Without a major scale-up of HIV prevention programs, using existing prevention tools, 60 million more HIV infections are projected to occur by 2015.  The best of the best have confirmed what many knew to be true: Only by significantly ramping up HIV prevention programs can we curb the scourge of HIV/AIDS. If the world does not listen, and new HIV infections continue to grow as they are, we'll have no one to blame but ourselves.  The members of this group  are the most knowledgeable experts on HIV prevention in the world and they have rung an alarm bell that world leaders must heed in order to put an end to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. 

Countries such as Haiti and Kenya have seen early success from a scale up of their HIV prevention programs, as reported by the Prevention Working Group. Haiti has seen a drop in HIV prevalence among pregnant women (from 6% to 3.4% between 1998 and 2004). In Kenya, HIV prevalence among adults fell dramatically, from 10% in the late 1990s to 6.1% in 2005.  But, with the populations of Haiti and Kenya projected to double in 43 and 27 years, respectively, how can this progress possibly continue?

HIV prevention and family planning should go hand in hand. Voluntary, non-coercive family planning programs, including access to contraceptives, help HIV positive women avert unintended pregnancies, while programs that promote condom use not only reduce unintended pregnancies, they also prevent the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections between sexual partners.

Tragically, however, family planning has played a diminishing role in the U.S. response to this epidemic. President Bush’s fiscal year 2008 budget request slashed international family planning assistance to Kenya and Haiti (as well as to six other PEPFAR focus countries) in half.  Meanwhile, populations are growing rapidly, HIV/AIDS continues to spread, and demand for family planning and HIV prevention and treatment programs continues to rise.

Ultimately, the success of our global effort to eradicate HIV/AIDS is two fold: we must scale-up prevention programs while simultaneously increasing access to family planning programs. While a stronger commitment to preventing new infections is paramount —and PAI joins the Prevention Working Group in calling for this—we will never get ahead of the race to end this deadly disease if people don’t have the tools to determine their own fertility.

PAI urges the U.S. and other nations to rapidly step up funding for HIV prevention and family planning programs. Ideology must be set aside in favor of heeding the warnings and advice from the experts.