HIVE ANNUAL MEETING

Advancing HIV Prevention and PrEP for Pregnant and Breastfeeding Women

Location: Nairobi, Kenya
Dates: April 22 – 24, 2026

Background

Pregnant and breastfeeding women remain a priority population within HIV prevention programming due to heightened risk of HIV acquisition as well as elevated risk of vertical transmission. Early and routine HIV testing is the essential first step in the prevention cascade for PBFW, ensuring timely identification of those who can benefit from pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). While daily oral PrEP has been available for PBFW in most countries for several years, uptake and persistence have remained suboptimal. The emergence of long-acting biomedical innovations for HIV prevention—such as injectable cabotegravir (CAB) and lenacapavir (LEN)—offers a promising opportunity to strengthen protection for PBFW and decrease vertical transmission when introduced in the maternal and child health (MCH) setting. Achieving successful scale-up of PrEP, requires not only understanding provider, recipient of care, and system needs, but also using this information to redesign programs in meaningful ways – supported by national policies, robust monitoring
and evaluation (M&E) systems, and country-led implementation strategies that respond to community priorities. As countries focus on HIV prevention and move toward expanding access to HIV testing, while integrating and scaling up PrEP within MCH platforms, there is a critical need to identify enablers, such as policy and guideline considerations, and community engagement and demand creation, while also examining service delivery models and rigorously reviewing, optimizing and interrogating data. In response, HIVE is increasing
its focus on HIV prevention, toward tailored programming in alignment with member country priorities as they accelerate PrEP scale-up for PBFW. To further advance these efforts, HIVE will convene an in-person meeting from April 22–24, 2026, in partnership with the National AIDS and STI Control Program (NASCOP), Kenya, immediately following the CQUIN meeting.

This HIVE meeting will bring together Ministries of Health, recipients of care, and key stakeholders to engage in practical exchange, tools sharing, and collaborative action planning to advance HIV prevention for PBFW.

Meeting Objectives

Advance effective rollout and integration of HIV Prevention (testing and PrEP) for pregnant and breastfeeding women:

  • Strengthen global and country-level understanding of PrEP rollout for PBFW – Share updates on HIV testing and PrEP implementation for PBFW
  • Highlight emerging evidence on PrEP safety, feasibility, acceptability, and
    implementation during pregnancy and breastfeeding – exchange innovations and
    country-led approaches that bring PrEP to scale for PBFW
  • Identify programmatic opportunities and challenges in introducing and scaling PrEP for PBFW – explore service delivery models, demand creation strategies, and integration within existing HIV, MCH, and VTP platforms
  • Improve monitoring and evaluation of HIV testing and PrEP in MCH settings.

Accelerate progress toward the elimination of vertical transmission of HIV

  • Review key VTP indicators to assess progress and challenges towards reaching elimination goals and define a select set of priority interventions to accelerate the elimination of new pediatric HIV infections.

Participants

The meeting will convene approximately 60 participants, primarily drawn from Ministries of Health and other key government departments involved in the VTP response, HIV prevention in the MCH, and other stakeholders, as well as members of the Community Advocacy Network.

Sessions

 The meeting will include plenary presentations, panel discussions, a Tools Lab, and interactive
country action planning sessions.

Expected Deliverables

  • Comprehensive meeting report, including specific feedback on the meeting objectives, that synthesizes the key themes, opportunities and challenges, and the emerging solutions.
  • Identification of priority interventions and activities for HIVE network and member countries.
  • Outputs from the meeting will inform follow-up technical support, refinement of country implementation, and scale-up of prevention services for PBFW, and continued engagement among countries to support equitable and sustainable HIV prevention for PBFW.
  • Updated country action plans, including plans for expanding access to HIV testing and scaling up PrEP
    for PBFW.