Coverage of Selected Services for HIV/AIDS Prevention, Care and Support in Low and Middle Income Countries in 2003 USAID, UNAIDS, WHO, UNICEF, and the POLICY Project (June 2004)  Full Document (English)      Order for free      email to me  Progress toward achieving the goals of the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS and the Millennium Development Goals requires significant expandsion of HIV/AIDS programs to foster a supportive environment, to prevent new infections, to care for those already infected, and to mitigate the social and economic consequences of the epidemic. One measure of progress is the percentage of people living in low- and middle-income countries who have access to key prevention and care services. This report presents the results of an assessment of the coverage of several key health services in 2003. It updates and adds information to a similar report on coverage in 2001. This report includes results from 73 countries, including most low- and middle-income countries with more than 10,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in 2003. The information presented here relies on service statistics and expert assessment. These data focus on the quantity of services provided and do not address the quality of those services. The results should be interpreted with caution but are useful in indicating the progress made in the last two years toward future goals. The results of this analysis suggest that most people in low- and middle-income countries do not have access to many key prevention services. Utilization is very low for voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) with an estimated 6.1 million visits per year or 0.2 percent of adults 15–49. Approximately 10 million pregnant women are offered services to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT), about 8 percent of all pregnant women in these countries. About 70,000 women receive AZT or nevirapine to prevent HIV transmission to the newborn child, only 3 percent of all HIV-positive pregnant women.