Reports with conflicting headlines landed in the inbox on the same day in the last week, leading to the question: are advances in the fight against HIV victory, or progress? Good news followed by bad news leads to cognitive dissonance, but can also point to gaps. Namibia winning HIV fight: Good news! Nigeria reduced HIV […]
The following is a guest post by Coco Jervis, senior U.S.and global policy associate Treatment Action Group , the science-based treatment advocacy organization. According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 8.7 million people became sick with tuberculosis in 2011, and more than 1 million are expected to die of the disease this year alone. […]
As policy makers and legislators celebrated PEPFAR’s 10th birthday with pledges of ”strengthened” commitment to the goal of an AIDS-free generation, and researchers compared findings on the challenges ahead, events on Capitol Hill left the funding for the work yet to be done uncertain. On Tuesday, Secretary of State Kerry told those gathered to commemorate […]
As President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief in-country teams build HIV-fighting strategies in the future, they will seek, report on, and provide written responses to input from groups representing those most affected by HIV, following a State Department cable sent to embassies around the world earlier this month and released Monday. The cable, to all diplomatic […]
The big news in the fight against HIV by and among people engaged in sex work happened Thursday, with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling against the policy requirement that kept PEPFAR money from going to any group that didn’t explicitly condemn prostitution. But oral arguments, as well as the court’s opinion, touched little on the […]
IN 6-2 DECISION: “The Policy Requirement goes beyond defining the limits of the federally funded program to defining the recipient” Public health experts said the requirement stifled an essential exchange of ideas. Congressional representatives said the requirement distorted the intention of the act that authorized the U.S. global AIDS response. Global health advocates and groups […]
THE DISTINCTION? “COUNTRY” INCLUDES CIVIL SOCIETY GROUPS REPRESENTING THOSE GOVERNMENTS JAIL, NEGLECT, LEAVE VULERNABLE In Zambia, the nation’s Home Affairs Minister tells gay rights advocates to “go to hell” while an HIV treatment advocate faces jail time for speaking of the need to reach vulnerable populations. In Kenya, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, homophobic views voiced by […]
As a registered nurse in Tanzania, Tatu Msangi often gets to see the overwhelming relief that crosses the face of a woman living with HIV when she learns her newborn child is free of the virus. As a mother, Msangi remembers the feeling. Nearly nine years ago Msangi learned she had the virus that leads […]
Findings highlight critical role of earlier treatment, support value of policies adopting earlier treatment guidelines An analysis of data from all adults in a rural South Africa HIV program over the course of eight years has shown that after guidelines widened eligibility for antiretroviral treatment, death rates within the first three months of treatment dropped. […]
WHO cites need to prevent new drug resistance, protect first treatment advance in more than 40 years The World Health Organization’s release this week of interim policy guidelines on the use of bedaquiline for treatment of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis offers hope to patients and their physicians running out of options to treat the disease, but the […]
HIV
The goals of controlling HIV sound like a straight forward series of three consecutive steps, one following another, when discussed in global and domestic epidemic-ending plans. […]
Tuberculosis
The announcement Wednesday of U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of pretomanid, a new tuberculosis drug that has been part of a ground-breaking treatment regimen against […]
Research & Development
A randomized, multi-country clinical trial testing a regimen for treating drug-resistant tuberculosis in less than a year against the up to two-year regimen recommended by the […]
Policy
With a report showing that 2018 yielded the highest case numbers seen so far of a paralyzing condition largely among children who had been sick with […]