Strategies to integrate community-based traditional and complementary healthcare systems into mainstream HIV prevention programs in resource-limited settings

BACKGROUND: Global spending for HIV prevention has been decreasing over the years. As a result, several low-income countries, including Nepal, are increasingly facing the challenge to minimize the funding gap to continue providing HIV prevention services to the people. In this paper, we have attempted to clarify why it is important to integrate community-based traditional and complementary healthcare systems and mobilize them into the mainstream HIV programs to ensure access to HIV prevention messages, HIV testing, and treatment in resource-limited settings. MAIN BODY: First, we argue that the traditional and complementary healthcare practitioners can be mobilized to routinely provide HIV prevention messages to their clients, and, next, some of them can be trained to build their capacity to work as counselors or educators for HIV prevention in the community. CONCLUSION: These approaches, if implemented, can help continue HIV prevention initiatives and contain the HIV epidemic at the local level in the rural communities with limited cost and resources.