International PMTCT initiatives

International PMTCT initiatives

There are a number of large-scale international initiatives to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV. These include:

1. The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)
2. MTCT-Plus
3. The Global Fund
4. The Call to Action Project
5. The UN Interagency Task Team on MTCT

The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)

On June 19th 2002, US President Bush announced a new $500 million International Mother and Child HIV Prevention Initiative to prevent the transmission of HIV from mothers to infants and to improve health care delivery in Africa and the Caribbean. The Initiative was later integrated into the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). In 2008 PEPFAR was reauthorized with the original $ 15 billion funding now tripled to $ 48 billion over the next five years.

The original Initiative had the aim of reaching one million women with HIV testing and counselling and providing preventive drugs to 80 per cent of HIV positive delivering women by 2007. It aimed to reduce mother-to-child transmission by 40 percent in its fourteen focus countries, twelve of which are in Africa.

From fiscal year 2004 to FY 2007, PEPFAR has supported prevention of MTCT for women during more than 10 million pregnancies with antiretroviral drugs being provided in over 827,000 pregnancies. This has resulted in the prevention of an estimated 157,000 infant HIV infections. ²⁶

AVERT.org has more information about the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief in our PEPFAR page.

MTCT-Plus

The MTCT-Plus Initiative was established in 2002, and is coordinated by the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. The Initiative aims to move beyond interventions aimed only at preventing infant HIV infection. It does this by supporting the provision of specialised care to HIV-infected women, their partners and their children who are identified in MTCT programmes. Funding for the initiative is provided by a group of private foundations, including the Gates Foundation, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, as well as by PEPFAR via USAID.

The MTCT-Plus Initiative provides operational funding, medications, training and technical assistance at 13 sites in sub-Saharan Africa and at one site in Thailand. Since its inception MTCT-Plus has provided care and treatment to more than 16,000 adults and children. ²⁷

The Global Fund

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is a public-private partnership that distributes grants worldwide to fund HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programmes. Grants are distributed over two years and most countries receive some grants to fund PMTCT programmes.

In 2008 the Global Fund announced that 271,000 HIV positive pregnant women had been reached with prophylaxis for PMTCT through Global Fund money in 2007.²⁸

AVERT.org has more about The Global Fund.

The Call to Action Project

The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation initiated the Call to Action Project (CTA) in September 1999 to help reduce MTCT of HIV in resource poor countries. The CTA is a public-private partnership that receives funding from both private sources such as the Gates Foundation and government grants. CTA has worked or is now working at approximately 400 sites in nineteen countries worldwide, of which twelve are in Africa.

The Foundation joined up with USAID in 2002 to rapidly expand PMTCT programmes. Programmes that were funded by USAID are now part of PEPFAR, while other CTA sites are still supported with private funding. By the end of 2003, the Call to Action project had trained over 5,000 healthcare workers and provided voluntary counselling to more than 625,000 women. As of March 31st 2008, the project had reached more than 5.2 million women with access to PMTCT services and had also provided more than 4.3 million women with HIV tests.

As off September 2010, the Call to Action Project will transition into other mechanisms. ²⁹

The UN Interagency Task Team on MTCT

The UN Interagency Task Team on MTCT involves UNICEF, UNFPA, WHO, the World Bank and the UNAIDS Secretariat and works with the governments of various low and middle-income countries to set up PMTCT programmes. In 2004, the Inter-agency partnership became known as "Children and HIV and AIDS," to reflect a broader understanding of how AIDS affects children.