27 MARCH 2015 VOLUME 16 ISSUE 13

Research findings disseminated to district leaders at Bugiri Hospital by Community Participation for Improved Service Delivery (COPISED), a non-government organisation, revealed that Namayingo District had the highest HIV prevalence at 10 per cent, while Kaliro and Buyende districts had the lowest prevalence at 0.2 per cent and 0.1 per cent respectively....The major question one would ask from the COPISE report is what could explain the disparity in HIV infection among the different districts in Busoga.

AIDS Project Los Angeles and APLA Health & Wellness are excited to announce that Vallerie Wagner, APLAHW’s chief operating officer, will receive the Advocate Award from Better Brothers LA in association with the DIVA Foundation. These organizations are recognizing Wagner for her extraordinary efforts to establish HIV/AIDS prevention and education initiatives in communities of color and for providing invaluable resources to communities disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS.

At least 15 percent of the 500,000 people living with HIV who are on antiretroviral treatment stopped taking the life-prolonging drugs. Director of HIV and AIDS Unit in the [health] ministry, Frank Chimbwandira, disclosed this in an interview yesterday when he commented on recent revelations that many districts across the country are reporting high rates of ART defaulters. An ART nurse at Chikwawa District Health Office said that...“Surprisingly, the majority of these are expectant mothers whom we put on Option B+ for Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT).”

...I am the principal investigator for the P18 Cohort Study, an investigation of young men who have sex with men, whom we have been tracking since they turned 18....When we assessed these young men at the onset of the study, only half of our sample reported a recent sexual health screening, and only 16 percent reported a rectal screening in their lifetimes, yet all were sexually active....More recent data from of our cohort at ages 22 to 23 reveal equally troubling information.

Faced with a growing HIV outbreak tied to intravenous drug use, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence said Wednesday he's considering a needle-exchange program as part of a public health emergency he's preparing to declare in a county that's at the epicenter of the cases. Pence, a Republican, said he opposes needle exchanges as part of drug-control policy but is listening to health officials to determine the best way to stop the outbreak in Scott County in southern Indiana.

The scale-up of antiretroviral therapy (ART) in Kenya is being undermined by high rates of treatment failure, investigators report in the online edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes....“We have demonstrated high virologic treatment failure among Kenyan ART patients and shown that peer support enhances adherence to improve treatment outcome,” conclude the authors. They recommend that adherence support using trained HIV-positive volunteers should be expanded and use of ART regimens recommended by WHO.

A new report by The Foundation for AIDS Research...notes that while HIV infections have decreased among members of the Black community vulnerable to HIV (Black women; babies; and injection drug users), they continue to increase among Black gay and bisexual men....The report concludes that the US HIV/AIDS epidemic cannot be addressed effectively without reducing new HIV infections among African Americans or gay men.

Ministers from the UK and Scottish governments have apologised and pledged extra funding after it emerged that more than 3,000 people were infected by hepatitis C and HIV via contaminated blood more than 30 years ago....There were shouts of “whitewash” as the report was presented at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, and several relatives burned a copy of the five-volume report outside the building.

The Indiana Department of Health has asked CDC to help contain an outbreak of HIV in the southern part of the state that has resulted in 55 confirmed cases, up from 26 in February, with 13 more preliminary positive cases. Most who were infected had shared syringes while injecting oxymorphone hydrochloride. In addition to putting extra resources into getting people into drug treatment, the department has launched a public awareness campaign, "You Are Not Alone."

At least 200 women in Kabale district tested positive for cervical cancer, in a recent testing drive by Reproductive Health Uganda (RHU). Cervical cancer, or cancer of the cervix, mostly affects women above 25 years and those with HIV. It is a silent killer in Uganda because people don't want to test, finding out when it is too late...."It is common in women with HIV/AIDS because of their low immunity," RHU's Programme Coordinator, Annet Kyalimpa, said.

A row over a law banning homosexuality in Uganda has been reignited after it emerged that the government paid a US public relations firm to offset negative publicity. Uganda's Observer newspaper said the government had spent 614 million shillings "to prop up Uganda's image" after it was "tarnished by the Anti-Homosexuality Act". It said that many MPs in the east African nation's parliament...were now refusing to approve the government's payment to Scribe Strategies and Advisors, a Washington-based lobbying firm.

Officially opening a two-day seminar in Selebi Phikwe on March 18, the United States ambassador, Mr Earl Miller, said over the 12 years the two governments had been working together, the American investment in this joint effort so far totaled more than US$700 million....Over the decade, new HIV infections dropped by 71 percent [and] the mother-to-child transmission rate...from around 40 percent to nearly 2 percent.

A group of experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) will arrive in Havana on Sunday, Mar. 22 to analyze the possible validation of Cuba as the first country in the world to eliminate syphilis and HIV/AIDS from mother to infant, or congenital transmission, according to UN health officials (computer translated). A team of at least 15 will visit doctor´s offices in neighborhoods in Havana, central Villa Clara and eastern Santiago de Cuba provinces, where they will evaluate the results of the Cuban Prevention Program for Sexually Transmitted Diseases.

There have been no new Ebola infections in Liberia in the past three weeks, but it's still far too early to say the virus has been defeated....But when the day does come and the crisis is declared over, how can prevention lessons be made to stick? Are there models to emulate from the global HIV campaign?...Both the HIV and Ebola public health campaigns have had to make the complex science of infection and disease control accessible, tackle stigma and counter rumour and misinformation.

Since HIV emerged in the '80s, drug "cocktails" transformed the deadly disease into a manageable one. But the virus is adept at developing resistance to drugs, and treatment regimens require tweaking that can be costly. Now scientists at the 249th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS) are announcing new progress toward affordable drugs that could potentially thwart the virus's ability to resist them.

This paper offers a research-grounded perspective on innovative financing mechanisms to facilitate access to expensive yet highly effective breakthrough medical treatments. The authors outline the scope of the problem; describe several policy and market options, including bond financing and linking repayment to real-world value generation; and describe real-world applications.

In this work, we report the use of phylogenetic analysis in a legal investigation of possible HIV transmission in China, where a man is suspected of transmitting HIV to a woman without disclosing his HIV status. Combining epidemiological and serological evidence, our results support that the virus was transmitted from the man to the woman.

Women were offered implants among other contraceptive methods, were randomized to daily TDF-FTC or placebo, and followed monthly up to 56 weeks. Of 739 women, 29 (3.9%) received implants with no incident pregnancies and one discontinuation. Concomitant TDF-FTC use was not associated with a significant change in plasma LNG concentrations among women using Sino-implant (II) in the first year of use.