Fertility in African communities affected by HIV

This "Studies of HIV in African communities 'Highlights'", which was produced by IDS Knowledge Services with partners in the ALPHA Network, includes findings and recommendations around the topic of fertility in African communities affected by HIV.  This publication is based on the research which came out of the ALPHA Network's seventh workshop on 'HIV & Fertility: an examination of the bio-social and behavioural impacts of HIV on fertility', held in Tanzania in April 2011.

The ALPHA Network aims to maximise the usefulness of data generated in community based longitudinal HIV studies in sub- Saharan Africa for national and international agencies involved in designing or monitoring interventions and epidemiological forecasting.
The project links several existing HIV cohort studies and runs training workshops to facilitate replication of analyses of demographic correlates and consequences of HIV infection previously published in just one or two sites. Comparative studies and meta-analyses are undertaken on comparable data sets, imposing a common format on data collected and stored in a variety of ways.

This 'Highlights', which describes fertility issues in Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, consists of the following 5 articles:

• family planning challenges in Uganda in the era of HIV.
  
• dramatic decline in teenage pregnancy: a reproductive health success story from Zimbabwe.
  
• is high marital fertility causing Uganda’s population explosion?
  
• educated Malawian women delay childbearing and have lower HIV risk.
  
• high fertility rates among young HIV-positive women in Kenya.