Preventing HIV infection remains vital in every country.  Effective prevention focuses on behaviors that contribute most to new infections.  In many countries, groups that engage in risky behaviors include sex workers, injecting drug users, men who have sex with men, and people with multiple concurrent sexual partners.  Working with vulnerable, often marginalized groups to reduce their exposure to HIV may require involvement of communities, peers, NGOs, police, health and social workers.

Our funding helps get prevention and support to high risk groups in many countries, including Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Jamaica, Lebanon, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and countries along the Abidjan-Lagos road corridor in West Africa.  A grant for the Great Lakes Initiative on AIDS is helping this post-conflict region work with refugees and internally displaced people.  Civil society organizations are important partners in many of these efforts.

In many countries in Eastern Europe and Asia, most new infections occur through injecting drug use.  This makes it vital to reach injecting drug users (IDU) with effective harm reduction activities, so that people unable to stop injecting illicit drugs at least minimize their risk of being infected with HIV or hepatitis.  As part of this, needle exchange and syringe programs decrease circulation of blood-borne pathogens via dirty needles or syringes, and encourage safe disposal of used equipment.  Working with governments, civil society organizations and other partners, we support harm reduction efforts in the Russian Federation, Moldova and in South and Central Asia.  In Vietnam, a pilot community-based approach that integrates harm reduction activities with treatment and care is being funded in two cities and one province, with the Ministries of Health, Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs working together.  Studies who that harm reduction works.  IDUs participating in needle exchanges quickly stop using dirty needles when they have a choice.