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22 JULY 2022 VOLUME 24 ISSUE 29

Media Coverage

  • HIV Criminalisation Continues With Over 270 Arrests Recorded in 39 Countries in the Last Three Years

    Since the first reported HIV-related prosecution in 1986, HIV criminalisation has occurred in at least 81 countries, according to a global report published today by the HIV Justice Network.

    July 22, 2022
    General
    aidsmap

  • HIV Care Fell in Black Communities During COVID-19. Here’s How Congress Can Get It Back on Track.

    Fears about undiagnosed or untreated HIV cases in Black and Latino communities are rising after the pandemic led to plummeting numbers of tests for HIV and prescriptions for HIV drugs. The medical community is worried that thousands of people simply put off getting tested or getting care during the pandemic and that many cases of HIV have gone undetected as a result.

    July 21, 2022
    General
    The Hill

  • Leading Figures Urge Drugs Firm To Lower Price of ‘Game-Changing’ HIV Prevention Drug

    Nobel laureates, business leaders, former premiers and celebrities have urged a UK pharmaceutical company to lower the price of its groundbreaking HIV prevention drug and ensure it is not kept “out of reach” of the world’s poor. In a letter signed by dozens of high-profile figures, including Sir Richard Branson, the singer Olly Alexander, the economist Joseph Stiglitz and Helen Clark, the former prime minister of New Zealand, the pharmaceutical company ViiV Healthcare is praised for having developed the first of a new kind of HIV prevention drug.

    July 21, 2022
    PrEP
    The Guardian

  • Rising Monkeypox Cases Alarm LGBTQ Activists

    Protesters in several cities across the country are calling on the Biden administration, as well as local officials, to address the rapid rise in monkeypox cases. Demonstrators, including many LGBTQ activists, say officials have yet to provide the necessary outreach to vulnerable populations as issues continue to plague the vaccine rollout. A protest is being planned for Thursday by several organizations in New York City, the epicenter of the US outbreak.

    July 20, 2022
    General
    ABC News

  • A New Tool Monitoring the Spread of HIV Raises Privacy Concerns

    Robert Suttle has seen firsthand the legal risks of having HIV. In 2008, Suttle said, a former partner accused him of not disclosing he was HIV-positive. He was charged under Louisiana law with "intentional exposure to AIDS virus." Rather than fight the charge and risk a longer sentence, Suttle pleaded guilty, received a sentence of six months in state prison, and was required to register as a sex offender. "You can be criminalized, certainly, for existing as a person living with HIV," he said.

    July 20, 2022
    General
    CNN

  • Treating HIV Taught Us About Inclusive Care. Now Monkeypox Is Testing What We Learned.

    Back in 1985, as a reliable blood test for HIV was first becoming available, I plunged headlong into medical residency at Bellevue Hospital in New York. Half of my patients had AIDS, and the challenge quickly became managing opportunistic infections with multi-organ involvement.

    July 20, 2022
    General
    USA Today

  • Black HIV Advocates Plan Summit to Address PrEP Disparities

    HIV disproportionately affects Black Americans. What’s more, many Black people who could benefit from PrEP, or pre-exposure prophylaxis, are not getting prescriptions for the daily pills or long-acting injections that can prevent them from getting HIV. To address these racial disparities, a group of Black HIV prevention advocates working with PrEP4All are holding a summit titled “PrEP in Black America” in Atlanta on September 13. The goal is to create a plan to promote, educate and implement PrEP in African-American communities.

    July 20, 2022
    PrEP
    POZ Magazine

  • Stop Squandering Opportunities To End AIDS: Be Responsive to the Needs of HIV Prevention Users

    Ten years ago this month, the Food and Drug Administration approved a daily pill that was up to 99 percent effective in preventing infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Expectations were high that this approach, known as oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), could change the course of the AIDS pandemic. It hasn’t. The use of oral PrEP today is stubbornly low, while HIV rates remain tenaciously high.

    July 19, 2022
    PrEP
    STAT

  • How Often Should PrEP Users Be Tested for STIs?

    Dutch researchers have found that 79 percent of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) diagnosed during PrEP users’ routine three-monthly checkups were asymptomatic. They also found that over half (52 percent) of these infections would have remained undiagnosed, and untreated, for an additional three months if they had only done STI testing every six months. These two findings encapsulate a dilemma that has faced sexual health clinicians since STI testing became more regular due to PrEP.

    July 19, 2022
    General
    aidsmap

  • People With Both HIV and Hepatitis B May Receive Better Care

    Less than 10 percent of HIV-positive people are adequately vaccinated against hepatitis B virus (HBV) despite being more vulnerable, according to research presented at this year’s Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI 2022). At the same time, another study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases found that people living with both HIV and HBV received better care than people with hepatitis B alone.

    July 19, 2022
    General
    POZ Magazine

  • Emory Testing New Vaccine To Fight HIV

    Larry Scott-Walker was six years old when he first heard about HIV. He remembers being fearful of the disease. While attending Morehouse College in the late 90s, Scott-Walker learned that several of his friends were living with HIV. In 2007, he would find out that he also had the disease. Now, Scott-Walker, 43, is the executive director of THRIVE SS, an organization founded in 2015 to support Black gay and bisexual men living with HIV in the Atlanta metro area.

    July 19, 2022
    HIV Vaccine
    The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  • ‘A Bright Life Ahead’: Botswana on Path to Seeing No Babies Born With HIV

    Being told her baby, Lesedi, was born without the HIV virus was “probably the happiest news I’ve heard”, says Neo Goitsemang, a street vendor. “The relief, from the guilt and fear, was unmatched.” Lesedi, from Selebi-Phikwe, a mining town in the east of Botswana, was born just months after her 35-year-old mother learned she was HIV positive.

    July 18, 2022
    General
    The Guardian

  • While All Eyes Were on COVID-19, HIV Researchers Were Making Progress on “The Holy Grail of Vaccines”

    It’s been an unprecedented two years for science, to put it mildly. We’ve seen a new virus spread across the world, entire cities go on lockdown, a devastating 6 million deaths globally (and counting), and in record time, the development of a life-saving vaccine. It’s no stretch to say that for anyone living on Earth, COVID-19 has been a big freakin’ deal.

    July 18, 2022
    HIV Vaccine
    Mother Jones

  • What’s Up With HIV Prevention and Black Women?

    In the United States, Black women are still being diagnosed with HIV — yes HIV, also known as Human Immunodeficiency Virus — at rates higher than any other racial and ethnic group of women. In fact, let’s run the math. Black women have a 1 in 54 lifetime risk of being diagnosed with HIV. Sadly, we represented more than 60 percent of new HIV diagnoses among all US women in 2020. During that same year, 3,812 Black women received an HIV diagnosis. And unfortunately, these numbers have been consistently high over time.

    July 18, 2022
    PrEP
    The Observer

  • Nigeria Capable of Ending AIDS in 2030 –Morah, UNAIDS Country Director

    In this interview with Daily Sun, Morah said at current coverage of 90-83, Nigeria is already well positioned to bring treatment to 95 per cent of all those in need and to keep 95 per cent of them on treatment virally suppressed. Morah, however, said there are many things that Nigeria must still do to ensure that the end of AIDS in sight is realized without fail.

    July 18, 2022
    General
    The Sun

  • Anthony Fauci, Who Oversaw US COVID-19 Response, To Step Down Before End of Joe Biden’s First Term

    The US president's chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci says he intends to leave his current role before the end of Joe Biden's first term in 2025. "By the time we get to the end of [President] Biden's first term, I will very likely [retire]," Dr Fauci told CNN. He said he was "sure" that he would not be in the role after January 2025. Dr Fauci has been the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984. In 2020 he became the face of the US government's efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.

    July 18, 2022
    General
    ABC Australia

  • Want To Reduce HIV Infections and Deaths? Give People Money.

    Give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day. But give people no-strings-attached cash, and you’ll reduce the rate of new HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths. Cash transfer programs have become popular in low- and middle-income countries for their potential to provide social safety nets and alleviate poverty, but their primary goal isn’t to improve public health. That’s why the findings of a new study, published Monday in Nature Human Behavior, are so encouraging for infectious disease scientists.

    July 18, 2022
    General
    The Daily Beast

  • Millions of Monkeypox Vaccines Ordered by Feds

    Following complaints about the federal government's slow response to the monkeypox (MPV) outbreak, the US Department of Health and Human Services announced on Friday it ordered another 2.5 million doses of the vaccine. The order, placed for Bavarian Nordic's JYNNEOS vaccine, immediately opened up 131,000 doses in local jurisdictions struggling to parse out jabs. Combined with a July 1 order of similar size, the government expects 7 million MPV doses to be part of its available supply by mid-2023.

    July 18, 2022
    General
    Plus Magazine

  • Specter of Monkeypox Haunts Sunday’s AIDS Walk in Golden Gate Park

    The return of the AIDS Walk San Francisco on Sunday for the first time since the pandemic continued a 36-year tradition as advocates for HIV/AIDS research celebrated the progress made while acknowledging the work remaining to find a cure. "When I started with this, people were dying. You would see them. Three weeks later they would be in the hospital, two weeks later they would be gone," said Bert Champagne, the event director of AIDS Walk San Francisco. "People are still getting infected, people are still dying so we still need to fight this fight."

    July 17, 2022
    General
    CBS News

  • KZN Rural Health Programme Sees 57 Men and Boys Circumcised in One Day

    KwaZulu-Natal Health Department said it was pleasantly surprised by the warm response to its rural health care initiative, particularly because 57 men and boys were circumcised in a single day. The department launched its community-based primary healthcare programme, “Isibhedlela Kubantu” targeting residents in far-flung rural areas. This week, health care workers set up mobile stations in Pongola, in northern KZN.

    July 16, 2022
    Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision
    The Citizen

  • A Decade After Approval, PrEP Hasn’t Reached its Full Potential

    On July 16, 2012, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Truvada for pre-exposure prophylaxis—better known as PrEP—to prevent HIV acquisition. But although uptake has improved over the past decade, PrEP still isn’t reaching everyone at risk for HIV. Truvada (TDF/FTC) contains two drugs, tenofovir disoproxil fumarate and emtricitabine, that are widely used for HIV treatment.

    July 16, 2022
    PrEP
    POZ Magazine

  • Group Calls on Gov Emmanuel To Sign HIV/AIDS Anti-Stigma Bill

    A group, Association of Women Living with HIV in Nigeria (ASWHAN) has called on Akwa Ibom State Governor, Mr Udom Emmanuel to sign into law, the HIV/AIDS Anti-Stigmatization and Discrimination Bill awaiting his assent. The State Coordinator, Mrs. Rachael Ignatius said the call became necessary following prevalence of new infection in the State and for a healthy future.

    July 16, 2022
    General
    Daily Post

  • PrEP Gave Us a Tool for Ending HIV, but It Has Failed To Deliver

    A few years ago, maybe 2016 or 2017, Kenyon Farrow traveled to Atlanta for work, where one of his Lyft drivers was an older Black woman. She struck up a conversation regarding why he was in town, and he told her about his work in HIV advocacy. He mentioned PrEP, the healthcare regimen that includes taking medication to prevent HIV transmission. The driver was confused initially and then curious: How long had this prevention tool been available? Farrow explained that the FDA had approved the first antiretroviral medication for PrEP in 2012.

    July 15, 2022
    PrEP
    Jezebel

  • What You Need to Know About COVID Shots and HIV

    COVID-19 misinformation runs wild on social media. Some people have been spreading a myth that COVID-19 boosters cause HIV. According to a 2022 Reuters article, some people are sharing a quote they claim came from Dr. Luc Montagnier, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, known for his role in the discovery of HIV. “For those of you that have taken the third dose, go and take a test for AIDS. The results may surprise you. Then sue your government.” There’s no evidence that Dr. Montagnier has ever said this.

    July 14, 2022
    General
    Healthline

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