Lusaka -- The U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), in collaboration with the National AIDS Council and UNAIDS, launched the DREAMS initiative today to reduce new HIV infections among adolescent girls and young women in Zambia.  Zambia will receive more than $30 million dollars for DREAMS from the U.S. Government through PEPFAR.  DREAMS is a public-private partnership with PEPFAR, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Nike Foundation, and Johnson & Johnson.

The DREAMS initiative aims to give girls the opportunity to live Determined, Resilient, Empowered, AIDS-free, Mentored and Safe lives through interventions that address HIV risk behaviors, HIV transmission, and gender-based violence.  The goal is to reduce new HIV infections among adolescent girls and young women in Zambia by 40 percent over two years. Young women and adolescent girls are disproportionately affected by HIV in Zambia.  HIV prevalence among young women aged 20-24 is 11.2 percent, compared to 7.3 percent among young men of the same age. 

“To reach the ambitious goal of reducing new infections by 40 percent we must address the many factors that make girls vulnerable to HIV.  It means working directly with girls and young women and their male peers as well as their families, communities, clinics, and schools,” said Ambassador Schultz. “Girls have the ability to carry Zambia’s development forward – supporting girls translates into a better future for Zambia.  We must support them so they can achieve their dreams.”

“While our strong focus on girls and young women in HIV programming is new, we are building on a long history of partnership and support of the Government of the Republic of Zambia in HIV prevention and response,” said U.S. Ambassador to Zambia Eric Schultz.  “Last year, the U.S. government through PEPFAR contributed $326 million to Zambia’s response and more than $2.6 billion since PEPFAR started in Zambia in 2004.”

DREAMS will be implemented in close cooperation with the Government of the Republic of Zambia through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the U.S. Peace Corps in Zambia.