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17 OCTOBER 2014 VOLUME 15 ISSUE 42

Media Coverage

  • New program breaks down HIV barriers with preventative treatment and a warm welcome

    “Welcoming.” “Friendly.” “Awesome.” Those are the words 27-year-old Nadji Dawkins of Oakland uses to describe CRUSH, a pioneering program in Oakland promoting sexual health for young men of color who have sex with men that is now offering preventative HIV treatment.
    October 17, 2014
    Oakland North

  • South Africa: Pregnant women and girls continue to die unnecessarily

    Hundreds of pregnant women and girls are dying needlessly in South Africa, partly because they fear their HIV status may be revealed if they access antenatal care services, according to a major report published by Amnesty International today.
     
    October 16, 2014
    Bloomberg Businessweek

  • Limited support for key populations undermines Ugandan HIV control

    Uganda’s HIV/AIDS control efforts have been undermined by a lack of consensus and clarity over which people constitute Key Populations (KPs) to be targeted in various prevention, care and treatment efforts, say experts. There is no consensus on the definitions of, and who to include as, KPs, with activists noting that the lack of clarity on KPs at policy level has an adverse impact on HIV prevention, care and treatment. 
     
    October 16, 2014
    IRIN

  • High effectiveness seen in English PrEP trial

    The Steering Committee* of the PROUD trial of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in gay men in England announced today that participants currently on the deferred arm of the study, who have not yet started PrEP, will be recalled to their clinics and offered the opportunity to begin PrEP ahead of schedule. This is because the effectiveness seen in the trial has exceeded the threshold set for trial continuation.
     
    October 16, 2014
    PrEP
    aidsmap

  • How lessons from the AIDS crisis can help us beat Ebola

    Without urgent action, Ebola could become “the world’s next AIDS,” said Thomas Frieden, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). HIV/AIDS has killed some 36 million people since the epidemic began, and another 35 million are living with the virus. Is history really about to repeat itself? It doesn’t have to, if we have the wisdom to learn from past experiences. 
    October 15, 2014
    TIME

  • South Africa: Cervical cancer steals sister too soon

    Sandra Madonsela says her sister might still be alive if she had gone for cervical cancer screening sooner....Her sister, who was also living with HIV, had been experiencing symptoms for some time before she succumbed to the cancer in June...."The staff from the clinic advised her to screen for cervical cancer, but she refused."
    October 15, 2014
    Health-e

  • National Latino AIDS Awareness Day: CDC data reveals lack of treatment In Hispanic population

    Latinos represent 17 percent of the US population, and remain one of the populations hardest hit by HIV in the United States, accounting for 21 percent of new HIV infections. Although we now have more HIV prevention tools at our disposal than ever before, new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data released today clearly show that one of our most powerful tools for protecting people’s health and preventing new infections – HIV treatment – isn’t making its way to most Latinos who need it.
     
    October 15, 2014
    Latin Times

  • Herpes vaccine maker Genocea reports positive results a year after the first dose

    Cambridge pharmaceutical maker Genocea remains at the head of the herpes vaccine pack, having newly released another set of positive results for its experimental HSV2 vaccine...,cutting down the genital lesion and viral shedding rates substantially over a significant time period. The company...[would] like to ultimately transition into developing a more prophylactic vaccine.
    October 15, 2014
    MedCity News

  • Russian HIV/AIDS vaccine to be tested with humans; HIV prevention pill takes centre stage in Sydney forum

    Russian anti-HIV/AIDS vaccine, KombiVITCHvak, is entering the second phase of clinical trials that involve testing with humans, the country's State Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology VECTOR or Novosibirsk announced Tuesday. According to VECTOR's Director General Valery Mikheev, KombiVITCHvak is the only anti-HIV/AIDS vaccine that has successfully reached the second stage of clinical trials. However, the trials on human faces financial hurdle with its budget being not approved yet.  
     
    October 15, 2014
    International Business Times

  • Ebola may change how aid is spent on healthcare in Africa

    The Ebola outbreak in West Africa has exposed major gaps in development aid, prompting a rethink of the balance between building health systems and tackling specific diseases like AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.
    October 13, 2014
    Reuters

  • Budget cuts are not why there's no Ebola vaccine

    [C]reating the best vaccine in the fastest time at the lowest cost needs to be left to the private sector, with financial gain, not political point-scoring, the primary motivation. That's why NIH Director Collins has it a bit wrong when he blamed government budget cuts.... Where he misses the mark is by not realizing that too much government involvement changes priorities from vital projects like eradicating killer diseases and makes a priority out of political patronage and pet projects.
     
    October 13, 2014
    CNBC

  • Immigrants, HIV and the true cost to the NHS: Should the 'International Health Service' be treating patients who come here with the killer disease

    At St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, London, the HIV-testing clinic is always busy and a cacophony of foreign voices sounds out from the waiting room....The remarkably swift and efficient NHS service at this world-famous hospital and other HIV testing clinics across the country is free to anyone, wherever they come from in the world....However, many believe that this change has led to an increase in so-called health tourism as foreigners deliberately come to this country to access free NHS treatment.
     
    October 13, 2014
    Daily Mail

  • Pharmaceutical companies, WHO help India in HIV/AIDS drug crisis

    Indian companies and global health groups are stepping up efforts to provide a critical medicine for the country's free HIV/AIDS drugs programme after more than 150,000 patients risked going without their dosages this month. Delayed tender approvals and poor co-ordination with states left the National AIDS Control Organisation scrambling for supplies.
    October 13, 2014
    Reuters

  • Ebola vaccine would likely have been found by now if not for budget cuts: NIH Director

    As the federal government frantically works to combat the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and responds to a second diagnosis of the disease at home, one of the country's top health officials says a vaccine likely would have already been discovered were it not for budget cuts....Francis Collins, [head of the NIH] also said that some therapeutics to fight Ebola "were on a slower track than would've been ideal, or that would have happened if we had been on a stable research support trajectory."
    October 12, 2014
    Huffington Post

  • Why barriers at the UK border won’t work for HIV

    Nigel Farage may want to suggest otherwise - with his proposal that people with HIV be barred from entering the country - but most people who have the virus in the UK were born here. According to Public Health England, which has collected and analysed the statistics ever since HIV emerged over 30 years ago, 62% of those who were newly infected with the virus in 2012 were born in the UK. The actual numbers are fairly small.... 
    October 9, 2014
    The Guardian

  • Swaziland king pays girls $18 a month to remain virgins; Uses World Bank HIV funds

    Swaziland's King Mswati III has reportedly announced to pay all teenage girls in the South Africa kingdom a monthly stipend of 200 rands ($18) for abstaining from sex and remaining a virgin....Local rumours...has it that the Swazi King, who already has 15 wives, brought in the new rule to ensure that he gets a disease-free new wife. The Swaziland authorities, however, have rubbished the speculations and stated that King Mswati III brought in the legislation to curb HIV transmission in the sovereign state.
    October 9, 2014
    International Business Times

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