Safety and prevention can help stop harm before it happens.

Preventing violence isn’t separate from healthcare, it’s foundational to it. More than one in three women and girls experience GBV in their lifetime, though men and boys are also affected, particularly during childhood. GBV can take many forms—sexual, psychological, physical—and encompasses harmful practices like child and forced marriage, sex trafficking, honor killings, and genital mutilation. While effective prevention strategies exist, progress has been slow due to weak enforcement of laws and deeply rooted inequalities and gender norms that place vulnerable groups at risk and deter them from seeking support.

Eight of the most common sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are either curable or manageable, and tools like PrEP, rapid testing, and mobile clinics have transformed both STI and HIV prevention. Despite this, more than one million STIs are contracted worldwide every day, driven in part by limited knowledge and persistent stigma that prevents people from seeking treatment. Major progress has been made against HIV, the most fatal STI, with global infections down 16% over the past decade and AIDS-related deaths cut nearly in half since the early 2000s. Yet the risk remains uneven—Africa accounts for 64% of all new HIV infections.

The prevention of reproductive cancers is highly cost-effective, leading the World Health Organization to deem it a “best-bet investment” for global health. Many of them, including cervical and prostate cancer, are manageable or even preventable with affordable screenings and vaccines. Of the half million women diagnosed with cervical cancer in the past decade, nearly 90% were from lower- and middle-income countries, where there is significantly less access to screenings and vaccines.