Preventing New Infections

Preventing HIV infection in women, including those who are pregnant or breastfeeding, is the most efficient way to avoid HIV infections in infants—and it saves women’s lives as well. Programs and policy makers can give attention to strengthening primary prevention services, such as counseling and testing, and condom provision to reduce the risk of sexual HIV transmission. Providers can counsel couples on reducing their risk of acquiring HIV and other STIs, offer condoms as needed, and promote HIV testing and counseling for pregnant and postpartum women including retesting, couples counseling.

    Preventing Unintended Pregnancies

    Family planning provides couples with HIV an opportunity to prevent unintended pregnancies and to avoid having children who are infected with HIV. Strengthening family planning programs for all women, especially in high prevalence settings, will reach many infected women who still do not know their status and need family planning. Providers can help women who want to avoid pregnancy choose and use a family planning method effectively.
      Preventing Unintended Pregnancies in Women Living with HIV in Resource-Poor Settings
      2010 | HIV and AIDS Treatment in Practice
      English
      In this issue of HIV and AIDS Treatment in Practice (HATiP) pillar two, the prevention of unintended pregnancies in women living with HIV, is the focus. The author reviews integratin of HIV and family planning programs as well as provides examples of best practice, practical suggestions from clinicians in the field as well as relevant tools and resources for resource-poor settings relatd to the preveniton of unintended pregnancies in women with HIV.
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      Family Planning Choices for Women with HIV (Population Reports)
      2007 | Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health | 24 p
      English |
      French |
      Spanish
      With access to family planning services, supportive care, and the information needed to make good choices, women with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), including women with acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), in many cases can lead healthy sexual and reproductive lives. Like all other women, women with HIV have the right to make their own decisions about their reproductive and sexual health. Health care programs and providers can help women with HIV and their partners make and carry out informed reproductive health decisions.
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      Contraception Cost-Effective for Preventing Mother-To-Child Transmision of HIV
      2006 | FHI | 2 p
      English
      Most efforts to reduce mother-to-child transmission of HIV focus on increasing HIV counseling and testing services and services that provide antiretroviral drugs, like nevirapine, to HIV-infected mothers and their newborns. But another strategy is to increase contraceptive use among sexually active women who wish to avoid pregnancy. Family Health International has developed a model to assess the cost-effectiveness of this strategy—preventing unintended pregnancies—as an HIV prevention approach.
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    Preventing Vertical Transmission

    The risk that a woman with HIV will transmit the virus to her infant can be reduced in a number of ways—prophylaxis with ARVs during pregnancy and breastfeeding, cesarean-section delivery, and following safe infant feeding practices. For more information on the most current WHO guidelines and recommendations for preventing vertical transmission of HIV go to the Policy and Guidelines section of the toolkit.

    Care for HIV Positive Mothers and their Children and Families

    Offering ongoing care and treatment and support for mothers with HIV and their infants helps to ensure the mother’s health and to protect the child’s health and development.