1 MAY 2015 VOLUME 16 ISSUE 18

The US-South Africa Program for Collaborative Biomedical Research, which is worth US$40 million, with the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) and the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) each funding half the amount, announced this month (13 April) that it will support 31 joint research initiatives.

Measles is back. After declaring it eliminated in 2000, the United States is now dealing with an uptick in cases. The latest outbreak began in California’s Disneyland theme park last December and, by early April, had ballooned to 159 cases across 18 states, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This troubling situation serves as a stark reminder of the importance of immunization, which for many years had kept this once ubiquitous and sometimes deadly childhood disease in check.

A study by the National Coordinating Agency has sparked fears that Botswana’s gains in combating HIV/AIDS may be under threat as the country has started to record high levels of HIV prevalence rate among adolescents aged between10 and 14 years....According to a slide presentation titled “rough road: cohort-level HIV Prevalence: 2004-2013” there was a sharp increase of 6.6 percent in HIV prevalence between 2008 and 2013 among the adolescents aged between 10 and 14....There was also a sharp increase in HIV prevalence among youth aged between 15-19.

The United State government, through USAID, is giving a $20 million grant for Uganda’s reproductive health care system. According to a press statement last week, the money will improve accessibility to family planning health services. Marie Stopes International will be the implementing agency.

A small study assessing the infectiousness of HIV-positive gay men taking antiretroviral therapy has found that all study participants had an undetectable viral load in the rectum, according to a presentation at the British HIV Association (BHIVA) conference last week in Brighton. Men who had rectal gonhorrea or chlamydia did not have detectable virus either, suggesting that concerns about sexually transmitted infections raising the risk of HIV transmission may be unfounded when people are taking effective HIV treatment.

The World Bank Group has approved a $500 million-International Development Association credit to improve maternal, child, and nutrition health services for women and children....Program-for-Results funds will only be disbursed for independently verified improvements in key services such as vaccination coverage, rates of contraceptive use, Vitamin A supplementation, skilled birth attendance, HIV counselling and testing among women attending antenatal care, and preventing new malaria infections among children.

Indiana public health officials defended Republican Gov. Mike Pence's decision to override a state law and set up a needle exchange program to address a severe HIV outbreak....The state legislature is debating a bill right now on whether to legalize needle exchanges.

According to an International Labour Organisation (ILO) study [launched Friday], the number of HIV infections has declined steadily over the last decade in general terms. "Thanks to key interventions such [as] behaviour change communications, condoms, prevention of mother-to-child transmission, widespread circumcision campaigns and other preventive measures, new HIV infections have declined steadily over the last decade," Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant said.

One-pill-a-day HIV treatments such as Atripla, Stribild, Complera, and Triumeq and Triumeq have the same rates of virological failure, drug resistance, and side effects as multiple tablet regimens, according to a meta-analysis presented to the British HIV Association (BHIVA) conference this week in Brighton. Single tablets cost the UK National Health Service (NHS) 5 five times more but have unproven clinical benefits, said Andrew Hill of Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.

HIV prevalence among MSM in Abidjan is more than four times as high as that of general population men. MSM engage in high-risk sexual behavior and most HIV-positive MSM are unaware of their serostatus. Greater access to HIV prevention, care, and treatment services targeted to MSM is necessary.

Despite the success of maternal antiretroviral therapy (ART) to prevent mother-to-child transmission of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), more than 200,000 children continue to acquire HIV-1 annually. Infants account for roughly 10% of new HIV-1 infections globally despite making up less than 2% of the world’s population.