Health priorities: HIV

The next few steps focus on programming for the health of adolescents and young people, considering why, as a demographic group, they’re special or different, and what we can do when developing programmes and interventions to better address their needs. To illustrate these points we’ll use the example of HIV, which ranks highly as a cause of death among adolescents globally, and is the top cause in Africa by a long way.

Many, but not all countries, have turned a corner in terms of HIV incidence in the past decade. However, adolescence is the only age group with increasing HIV mortality. One reason for this is that adolescents’ access to testing, treatment, and subsequent adherence to it is relatively low in adolescents for a number of reasons. There are many ways in which these barriers can be reduced, but experience has shown that a combined, multisectoral, youth-friendly approach is needed when developing HIV programmes for adolescents, some of which are introduced in the next step.