Science Speaks: HIV & TB News

HPTN researchers: Don’t forget family planning in HIV prevention

Rabita Aziz — Fri, 17 May 2013 16:50:33 +0000

With pregnant women facing higher chances of acquiring HIV and greater dangers of life-threatening complications as a result of HIV, in addition to risks of passing the virus to their children, some of the most ambitious and promising developments in HIV prevention will be those that allow women to protect themselves both from the virus and from unplanned pregnancies, researchers at the HPTN annual meeting said.

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As sequestration strikes disease fighting efforts, Defense Department’s role in global health is little understood

Antigone Barton — Thu, 16 May 2013 17:56:14 +0000

With a role in global health responses and research so extensive that a chart outlining its efforts looks a little like a maze, the United States Department of Defense has to ground itself in "institutional humility" to integrate the roles of fellow agencies and foreign partners in international disease-fighting efforts, as one speaker put it.

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HPTN Annual Meeting: Superinfection raises questions, offers insights

Antigone Barton — Wed, 15 May 2013 12:01:10 +0000

What would people living with HIV do differently if they knew that they could be infected again, with a new strain, that could complicate both their disease, and their treatment?

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What We’re Reading: Cutting aid, cutting human rights, cutting disease-fighting efforts, and more . . .

Antigone Barton — Tue, 14 May 2013 13:30:20 +0000

UK to cut direct aid to South Africa – AIDS Alliance Response: While news that Britain plans to end direct aid to South Africa by 2015 was met with concern in opinion columns around the world, this piece from AIDS Alliance spells out why this will risk investments in the HIV response to date: the [...]

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HPTN Annual Meeting: Is “PopART” research, or just good health practice?

Antigone Barton — Thu, 09 May 2013 16:55:08 +0000

It sounds obvious, urgent, and ambitious: Make HIV counseling and testing as well as links to subsequent care and prevention services universally available, and watch the numbers of new infections drop steeply. Increasingly, Richard Hayes of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said Monday, it also sounds practical.

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HPTN Annual Meeting: The story of Project Accept one of both process and results

Antigone Barton — Wed, 08 May 2013 16:40:09 +0000

The HIV Prevention Trials Network is holding its annual meeting in Washington, DC this week, and Science Speaks is there, covering Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday sessions. As Tom Coates was getting ready to discuss the results of Project Accept, a 10-year study of the impact of community involvement HIV efforts on community-wide HIV incidence, he [...]

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HPTN Annual Meeting: “One thing begets another . . .” from questions, to discoveries, to policy

Antigone Barton — Tue, 07 May 2013 17:47:17 +0000

The HIV Prevention Trials Network is holding its annual meeting in Washington, DC this week, and Science Speaks is there, covering Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday sessions. Can community involvement in HIV testing make an impact on the stigma that has clung to the disease and hindered treatment? Can paying teenage girls to stay in school [...]

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A tour of cure news, a request for proposals, the facts about HIV treatment, and more

Antigone Barton — Mon, 06 May 2013 16:49:43 +0000

‘Cured of AIDS’? Not yet: This New York Times article by Donald McNeil captures the excitement spurring HIV cure research and the significance of recent developments, and spells out the ways that knowledge about how virus works continues to grow. It is more accessible than the research presentations that announced these advances, more comprehensive than [...]

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Panel members: Policy stemming from PEPFAR evaluation needs to integrate “earthquake” that happened in its midst

Antigone Barton — Fri, 03 May 2013 17:55:35 +0000

When a report evaluating the impact of the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief produces recommendations that give little weight to the most recent major scientific breakthrough in HIV research, what will its impact on policy be? That ended up being one of the central questions in a panel discussion April 30, at the Center [...]

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Physicians, researchers, advocates tell Obama and Congress: Gaps in President’s budget request will reverse gains

Antigone Barton — Thu, 02 May 2013 17:42:00 +0000

Three weeks after President Obama’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2014 appeared, sustaining support for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS Tuberculosis and Malaria, while cutting funds to the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief, and hacking global TB funding, physicians, scientists, and global health advocates are weighing in. And while United States Agency for [...]

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