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12 DECEMBER 2014 VOLUME 15 ISSUE 50

Media Coverage

  • The AIDS problem in Papua New Guinea

    Papua New Guinea, Australia's closest neighbour, is dealing with an HIV/AIDS epidemic. A high incidence of sexual aggression, violence against women, the impact of alcohol and drugs on sexual behaviour and commercial sex are just some of the reasons for the level of HIV infection in the country....On World AIDS Day on December 1, 2014, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said PNG was a particular focus for the Australian Government.
    December 11, 2014
    Radio Australia

  • Kaiser PrEP users see no new HIV infections

    No new HIV infections have occurred among more than 500 Kaiser Permanente members using pre-exposure prophylaxis – better known as PrEP – but condom use appears to be declining among a subset of gay men, according to a small survey presented at a forum commemorating World AIDS Day....Bradley Hare, Kaiser's director of HIV care and prevention, described preliminary findings from a survey of Kaiser members who started taking Gilead Sciences' Truvada combination pill to prevent HIV.
     
    December 11, 2014
    PrEP
    Bay Area Reporter

  • Transgender women left behind as tide turns in fight against HIV

    When she transitioned from a man to a woman at the age of 27, Cecilia Chung lost her friends, her family and her job. Ostracised from society for being transgender, and relying on sex work to survive on the streets of San Francisco, Chung was unprepared for the horror that was to follow....
    December 10, 2014
    Reuters

  • Discriminatory laws hinder Burundi’s response to HIV

    On Human Rights Day (10 December), Jean Claude Kamwenbusa reports on how the criminalisation of same sex relationships in Burundi is putting people’s health and lives at risk.... “Laws that criminalise consensual sexual conduct and real or perceived sexual orientation increase the risk of HIV/AIDS among the sexual minorities in Burundi,” said a member of Burundian Youth Network of HIV Positive (RNJ+).... 
    December 10, 2014
    Key Correspondents

  • Nigeria: SWAAN seeks indigenous commitment to HIV/AIDS advocacy

    The Society for Women and AIDS in Africa Nigeria, SWAAN, has urged indigenous companies and individuals to be committed in supporting government in the fight against HIV/AIDS in the country. Speaking during a 15 kilometre walk to sensitise residents of Ojuelegba in Surulere, Lagos, SWAAN President, Mrs. Funmi Doherty said that it is high time Nigeria as a country doubled efforts in the battle against HIV moreso as supporting donors from outside the country are withdrawing their services.
    December 10, 2014
    Vanguard

  • Botswana minister makes case for brothels

    Botswana’s Assistant Minister of Local government and Rural Development, Botlogile Tshireletso on Wednesday called on the government to set up brothels and abortion clinics to help stave off diseases like HIV/AIDS...She explained that to some of the countries she has been to sex workers are helped with brothels to protect their health.
    December 10, 2014
    Star Africa

  • HIV has become more virulent over time, not less, European study finds

    The largest cohort study ever to look at CD4 count and viral loads in HIV-positive people around the time of diagnosis has found evidence that HIV, at least in Europe, has become more virulent over time....These figures differ strikingly from a recently published study (Payne et al.) which finds that HIV’s replicative capacity has declined over time, at least in southern Africa. This study received wide publicity in the world’s media after being reported by the BBC on World AIDS Day.
    December 10, 2014
    aidsmap

  • Merck wins FDA approval for Gardasil follow-up

    Merck's Gardasil follow-up, [Gardasil 9], is here, meaning blockbuster sales figures are likely on the way. But the bad news is that they'll come at the expense of the world's second-best-selling shot....While analysts estimate the new vaccine could rake in $1.9 billion a year at its peak, much of its potential market share will come at Gardasil's expense. 
    December 10, 2014
    FierceVaccines

  • Kenyan women with HIV sue over sterilisation

    A group of HIV-positive women in Kenya has taken legal action against the government, accusing it of arranging for them to be forcibly sterilised. The five women are demanding compensation from the government and the non-governmental organisations they say carried out the sterilisations. Activists protested in the capital, Nairobi, to call for the practice to be banned, claiming it was widespread. The government has not yet commented on their allegations.
    December 10, 2014
    BBC News

  • British public still in the dark about HIV 30 years on

    Less than half (45%) of the British public understand how HIV is and isn’t transmitted, new research reveals today[1]. NAT (National AIDS Trust) research commissioned from Ipsos MORI also reveals an increase in myths and misunderstanding about HIV.
     
    December 10, 2014
    aidsmap

  • FDA approves 9-valent HPV vaccine for certain cancers

    The FDA today approved a new vaccine for the prevention of certain diseases caused by HPV that has the potential to prevent approximately 90% of anal, cervical, vaginal and vulvar cancers. The recombinant HPV 9-valent vaccine (Gardasil 9, Merck) covers nine HPV types, which is five more than the quadrivalent HPV vaccine (Gardasil). The vaccine is indicated for females aged 9 to 26 years and males aged 9 to 15 years....
     
    December 10, 2014
    Healio

  • The rise of patient peer review

    When it comes to clinical research, the participation of the people being treated—the patients—usually ends by the time the study is submitted to a journal. A few UK-based publishers are now looking to change that. Last month, BioMed Central, an open-access publisher, announced that in 2015 it will launch the journal Research Involvement and Engagement, which will closely collaborate with patients in all aspects of its editorial processes, including peer review.
    December 10, 2014
    Science

  • Within NIH’s flat 2015 budget, a few favorites

    Although the massive 2015 spending agreement reached by Congress last night gives the National Institutes of Health a flat budget, it contains modest increases for a few programs within the agency. An accompanying report also contains several directives that biomedical research advocates are eyeing warily.
     
    December 10, 2014
    Science

  • Angola may cut funding for HIV prevention as oil prices fall

    Angola may spend less than half the money it did in 2013 to fight HIV next year as declining oil prices reduce revenue and donors scale back funding to Africa’s second-largest producer of the commodity. The southwest African country is budgeting $11 million to battle HIV infections next year, compared with $16 million for 2014 and $22 million in 2013. 
     
    December 9, 2014
    Bloomberg

  • HIV in the UK: 76% diagnosed, 90% on treatment, 90% undetectable

    The United Kingdom's annual epidemiological report, released in late November, shows that the country already provides HIV treatment to 90% of people accessing clinical services and that 90% of those on treatment have an undetectable viral load. But the country has a long way to go in ensuring that people with HIV are aware of their HIV status....The problem is particularly acute in black African communities....
     
    December 9, 2014
    HIV & Hepatitis

  • Marginalised communities warn of AIDS/TB “tragedy” in Eastern Europe and Central Asia

    Marginalised communities and civil society groups helping them are warning of a “tragedy” in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA) as international funding for HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis (TB) programmes in the regions is cut back. The EECA is home to the world’s only growing HIV/AIDS epidemic and is the single most-affected region by the spread of multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB)....
     
    December 9, 2014
    IPS

  • Nigeria: HIV/AIDS spread attributed to gender violence

    Gender-based violence has been identified as a contributing factor to the spread of the HIV/AIDS in Nigeria. Permanent Secretary of Women Affairs Ministry, Dr. Ezekiel O. Oyemomi, noted this in Abuja during the national dissemination meeting for the national plan of action on gender based violence-HIV intersection....
    December 8, 2014
    Daily Trust

  • Money, sex and HIV: unpacking conditional cash transfers

    Conditional cash transfers to affect sexual behaviour are increasingly popular in HIV prevention research and rhetoric. This consists in paying mostly young people money if they do not get a sexually transmitted infection (STI), which is a marker for unprotected sex and, therefore, HIV risk. The RESPECT study...in Tanzania has been described in a World Bank working paper as creating significant reduction in STIs in one of the intervention groups....However, a survey of participants one year later showed a sustained effect among males only.
    December 8, 2014
    IPS News

  • HPV vaccine, riskier sexual activity not linked, Canadian researchers say

    Sexual behavior of teenage girls does not appear to be impacted by the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine, according to researchers. Since 2006, the HPV vaccine has been licensed in almost 100 countries. Many of these countries have national HPV vaccination programs to protect young girls against the virus before they become sexually active.
    December 8, 2014
    HPV Vaccines
    Science Daily

  • Injectable 3-D vaccines could fight cancer, infectious diseases

    A non-surgical injection of programmable biomaterial that spontaneously assembles in vivo into a 3-D structure could fight and even help prevent cancer and also infectious disease such as HIV, scientists have demonstrated. Tiny biodegradable rod-like structures made from silica, known as mesoporous silica rods (MSRs), can be loaded with biological and chemical drug components and then delivered by needle just underneath the skin, they explain.
    December 8, 2014
    Science Daily

  • Cuomo’s bid to end AIDS must connect women to daily drug

    With Governor Andrew M. Cuomo's announcement of an ambitious plan to end the AIDS epidemic in New York State by 2020, there lies increasing promise in HIV prevention....This hope stems, in part, from a relatively new HIV prevention approach called pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP)....However, PrEP's full promise can be realized only if those who need it can get it—and the topic of how women (and particularly women of color) may benefit from PrEP has been largely absent from the national discourse.
     
    December 8, 2014
    City Limits

  • USAID head Raj Shah may step down

    Rajiv “Raj” Shah, the administrator of the US Agency for International Development who coordinated the United States’ international response to the Ebola crisis, is said to be leaving his post, and chatter has it that the announcement could come this week....“These are nothing but rumors,” a USAID spokesman said, when we asked him about Shah’s plans.
    December 8, 2014
    Washington Post

  • Immunotherapy for STI treatment: Agenus CEO on its genital herpes vaccine

    Many companies are contending to hit the market first in the race for a genital herpes vaccine. The thread that ties them together? Immunotherapy – the wunderdrug for cancer therapy that’s now showing promise for infectious disease. But it hasn’t always been so, said Agenus CEO Garo Armen, whose immunotherapy approach in both cancer and in infectious disease like herpes had been “pooh-poohed” for years....
     
    December 8, 2014
    MedCity News

  • Young Puerto Rican women and their mothers know little about HPV, cervical cancer

    Young Puerto Rican women and their mothers know little about the human papillomavirus (HPV) and cervical cancer, according to researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) School of Public Health. According to the study published in Preventing Chronic Disease, HPV vaccination rates are low among Puerto Rican women. Fifty one percent of Puerto Rican girls aged 11 to 18 have started the 3-step vaccination process and only 21 percent have completed the series.
    December 6, 2014
    Science Daily

  • World Bank calls for development policy “redesign” around human behaviour

    The World Bank has taken an unusual but highly visible step away from traditional economics, encouraging policymakers and development implementers to place far more emphasis on research into local human behaviour when drawing up plans and projects....The bank emphasises that such a focus is important for understanding the behavioural peculiarities of not just poor communities but also policymakers, including those within the World Bank itself.
    December 4, 2014
    IPS News

  • Pakistani children test positive for HIV after blood transfusions

    At least 10 Pakistani children who received blood transfusions have tested positive for HIV, officials said Thursday, with a leading medic predicting the discovery could be just the "tip of the iceberg". The children were receiving regular transfusions for the blood disease thalassaemia, said Professor Yasmin Rashid, the secretary general of the Thalassaemia Federation of Pakistan, a consortium of charities that offer transfusions to 22,000 children.
    December 4, 2014
    Reuters

  • Despite some controversy, the CDC is pro-circumcision – HIV prevention being a key reason

    A long-anticipated draft of federal guidelines on circumcision was released on Tuesday, and it turns out that the health benefits of the procedure are clear, and health insurers should ideally pay for it....But they aren’t totally in action yet. For the next 45 days, the CDC will receive public comment before finalizing them next year....[In the United States, a] wave of state Medicaid programs stopped paying for newborn circumcisions....
    December 4, 2014
    MedCity News

  • Generations of HIV

    Each generation of gay men has the distinct experience of being uniquely impacted by HIV. One of the best-understood and often explored generational experiences of HIV is the early years -- a time when the disease violently and unexpectedly emerged in the community. For those of us who come of age after those events, HIV didn't arrive to alter the world, as we knew it. It was the world, as we knew it....The problem is that over the past 30 years, we haven't had great relationships between the generations....
     
    December 4, 2014
    Huffington Post

  • Deferring ART more than 1 year reduced chance of immune recovery

    Deferring antiretroviral therapy more than 12 months after the estimated date of seroconversion reduced the possibility of restoring the immune system among people with HIV, according to new data. “We demonstrated in the present study that there is a narrow time window after acquiring HIV infection within which the commencement of ART favors CD4+ normalization,” the researchers wrote in JAMA Internal Medicine.

     

     
    December 3, 2014
    Healio

  • PEPFAR, Nike Foundation and Gates Foundation partnership restores hope for an AIDS-free future for girls

    [This new partnership...] will -- for the first time -- scale-up a core package of evidence-based interventions to address the many interlocking challenges that face adolescent girls and young women in the hardest hit countries in Eastern and Southern Africa....When implemented individually, these interventions and others have successfully addressed risk behaviors, HIV transmission, and gender-based violence. When implemented together..., they have the potential to be even more impactful.
     
    November 29, 2014
    Huffington Post

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