Governments in southern Africa need to work harder at treatment scale-up, say activists

Governments in southern Africa are still failing to honour their own commitments to scale up access to antiretroviral therapy despite the growing availability of international donor support to do so, according to a new report from the Southern Africa Treatment Access Movement (SATAMo).

Read More >>

Southern Africa: a long road to male circumcision

Looking to get circumcised to reduce your risk of HIV infection? If you’re living in Southern Africa, you might have a long wait until services become more widely available.

Read More >>

Chinese HIV prevention with drug users undermined by police

Chinese police and security forces are driving injecting drug users away from prevention services, undermining the country’s efforts to contain a growing epidemic among China’s drug users, according to a new report issued this week by Human Rights Watch.

Read More >>

Study highlights bootlenecks in ARV supply in West Africa

In West and Central Africa, large amounts of money are spent on buying antiretroviral (ARV) drugs but weak distribution systems mean many HIV-positive patients never get them, said speakers at the 15th International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA) in Dakar, Senegal, last week.

Read More >>

Botswana expects HIV treatment numbers to reach 225,000 by 2016

Botswana’s government expects the number of citizens receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) to increase by more than 50% in the next eight years, reaching 220,000 by 2016, President Ian Khama said last week.

Read More >>

Improved knowledge of sexual health not translating into HIV decline in adolescents in 8-year trial

A large randomised controlled trial of sexual and reproductive health interventions in schools, health services and communities and Tanzania has found that while the interventions increased adolescent knowledge about sexual health, they had no significant impact on HIV transmission or other sexually transmitted infections, nor on pregnancy rates.

Read More >>

Community support improves HIV treatment outcomes for patients in South Africa

Community support initiatives significantly improve responses to antiretroviral therapy amongst patients in South Africa, a study published in the November 30^th edition of AIDS shows. The research also showed that baseline characteristics were also important for the first six months, and the investigators suggest that community support is particularly valuable at this time for patients who start HIV treatment with a low CD4 cell count and high viral load.

Read More >>

High prevalence of pre-cancerous anal lesions in women with HIV

HIV-positive women have a high prevalence of pre-cancerous anal lesions, American investigators report in the January 2^nd 2009 edition of AIDS. The researchers found that 12% of HIV-positive women had low-grade pre-cancerous lesions and that high-grade lesions were present in 9% of women. Anal infection with human papilloma virus was an important risk factor for the presence of pre-cancerous anal lesions.

Read More >>

High prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in patients with HIV

Almost a third of HIV-positive patients have vitamin D deficiency, Dutch researchers report in the November edition of AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses. Dark skin colour was the most important risk factor for this disorder. Amongst patients with white skin, more patients taking NNRTI-based HIV treatment had vitamin D deficiency than did patients taking antiretroviral therapy based on a protease inhibitor.

Read More >>

Promising early results for large-scale study of community-level HIV prevention initiative

Uptake of voluntary counseling and testing increased dramatically in intervention communities during the first two years of a community-randomised controlled HIV prevention study in four countries, according to an article in the December 1^st edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes. Project Accept seeks to reduce HIV transmission by changing community norms through a combination of community mobilisation activities; high-quality HIV mobile voluntary counseling and testing (VCT); and post-test support services.

Read More >>

Fluconazole shown to be more effective against cryptococcal meningitis at higher dose

A small Ugandan study has shown that 1200mg of fluconazole per day appears to be a better treatment for cryptococcal meningitis than 400 to 800mg per day, which is the dosage typically administered to patients in many African health facilities. The study was reported in the December 15^th edition of Clinical Infectious Diseases.

Read More >>

GNP+ launches website documenting global HIV exposure / transmission laws and prosecutions

The United States tops the world table of criminal prosecutions for HIV exposure or transmission according to data published this week by the Global Network of People Living with HIV (GNP+). The past few weeks have also seen the publication of three important new documents highlighting why so many of these prosecutions make for poor public policy.

Read More >>

Different paediatric responses to antiretroviral therapy in Uganda and the United Kingdom/Ireland may reflect differences in nutrition and access to cotrimoxazole

Researchers have reported that while HIV-positive children in Uganda and the United Kingdom/Ireland responded similarly to antiretroviral therapy in most regards, the Ugandan children lagged behind in CD4 cell recovery and body growth. The study, published in the December 1^st issue of Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, calls attention to the potential for malnutrition and opportunistic infections to undercut the benefits of antiretroviral therapy.

Read More >>

Children starting HIV treatment in sub-Saharan Africa have a low risk of death

There is a low risk of death for children starting HIV treatment in sub-Saharan Africa, an international team of investigators report in the December 15^th edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes. The risk of death after starting HIV treatment was 7% and three-quarters of deaths occurred in the six months after antiretroviral therapy was started.

Read More >>

Widespread resistance to antiretrovirals among children in the Central African Republic

HIV-positive children who are being treated with antiretroviral drugs in the Central African Republic are infected with a wide variety of HIV subtypes, don’t adhere well to their treatment, and seldom have an undetectable viral load, according to a study published in the December 15^th edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes. The investigators also found that resistance to antiretroviral drugs was widespread.

Read More >>

HIV testing for mothers and children must expand, UN report shows

Access to HIV testing and antiretrovirals for prevention of mother to child HIV transmission has grown substantially over the past four years in the countries most severely affected by HIV, UN agencies reported today – but around 40% of women in the high prevalence countries of southern Africa are still not being offered an HIV test during pregnancy.

Read More >>

Traditional healers could play key role in ART rollout

Traditional healers could potentially be an important source of HIV treatment in some African settings, according a study published in the December 1^st edition of AIDS. Investigators from Zimbabwe and the University of Pennsylvania found that patients reported better quality of life after a visit to a traditional healer than did patients who accessed orthodox medical services.

Read More >>

Mbeki's opposition to ARVs cost 330,000 lives, shows study

The refusal of the Mbeki government to roll-out antiretroviral therapy and treatment to prevent mother-to child transmission in South Africa resulted in 330,000 needlessly premature HIV-related deaths and 35,000 avoidable case of mother-to-child HIV transmission according to estimates published in the December 1^st edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.

Read More >>

Universal testing and treatment could reduce new HIV infections in southern Africa by 95% in 10 years

Universal HIV testing and immediate antiretroviral therapy for everyone diagnosed with HIV in a country with very high HIV prevalence could reduce new infections from 20 per thousand to 1 per thousand within ten years (a 95% reduction), according to findings from a mathematical modelling exercise carried out by the World Health Organization, published on November 26th by The Lancet.

Read More >>

Excellent outcomes from five years of antiretroviral use in Botswana

The first five years of a large-scale antiretroviral programme have resulted in excellent, sustained rates of virologic suppression, CD4 cell count increases, and improved clinical outcomes among adults in Botswana, according to a study reported in AIDS.

Read More >>

CD4 cell count increases sustained up to five years in developing-world treatment programmes

According to a large-scale collaborative analysis reported in AIDS, antiretroviral programmes have led to significant and sustained increases in CD4 cell counts among people in low-income countries who are able to remain on therapy. Among nearly 20,000 people receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) in African, Latin American, and Asian study cohorts, median CD4 cell counts increased from a baseline of 114 cells/mm³ to 395 cells/mm³ after five years on treatment.

Read More >>

Second-line combinations fail twice as often as first-line ones in the first year

Although the success rates are still encouraging, a study from London’s Royal Free Hospital has found that roughly twice as many second-line anti-HIV drug regimens stop working in the first year as first-line regimens, and that this difference in failure rates persists until at least the third year after therapy initiation.

Read More >>

If you can't switch, better to stay on failing treatment than stop it, studies show

Patients on failing drug regimens maintain stable CD4 counts with detectable viral load levels up to 10,000 copies/ml, as long as they remain on HIV treatment, a study presented at the Ninth International Congress on Drug Therapy in HIV in Glasgow showed this week.

Read More >>

 

Editor/writer, materials for healthcare workers and community-based organisation staff in resource-limited settings

Reporting to: Senior Editor

The role:

NAM is a dynamic and forward thinking charity based in London. It is one of the world's pre-eminent sources of independent, accurate, evidence-based information on HIV/AIDS.  NAM has been producing information on HIV/AIDS, and disseminating it across the world, for over 20 years.

NAM has a sizeable audience among healthcare workers and community-based organisation (CBO) staff in resource-limited countries.  This new post has been created to support the development of materials and resources for this particular audience.  The postholder will work closely with NAM's Senior Editor and the Editor of the acclaimed twice-monthly e-newsletter for healthcare workers and CBO staff in resource-limited settings, HIV & AIDS Treatment in Practice (HATIP).

The role will be responsible for researching and writing clinical reviews covering specific HIV/AIDS related conditions for publication in HATIP.  The post holder will lead and develop on-line discussion forums for healthcare audiences designed to promote good practice and peer exchange of successful models of care.   S/he will also write news stories about HIV/AIDS treatment and care in developing countries for aidsmap.com.

Please note that to comply with UK employment law, candidates must be nationals of states of the European Economic Area (EEA), Swiss or Turkish nationals or Commonwealth citizens with the right to work in the UK.

To find out more about the job and to download an application form, go to http://www.aidsmap.com/cms1283254.aspx

 

If so, we'd love to hear from you!

During the International AIDS Conference we met delegates from all over the world who are translating or adapting our materials into numerous languages.

For example we learnt about translations of various materials, including articles from HATIP, into Nepali, Russian, Romanian, Creole, Swahili and Shona.

We'd like to collect and make available as many translations and adaptations as possible through our website, and publicise them, along with the work of the groups who have carried our those translations and adaptations.

Please get in touch with us and tell us what you are doing, so we can share these translations and adaptations as widely as possible. Please send us a pdf copy too! 

We are also very interested in hearing your feedback - how did you have to adapt the material for your local setting, and what materials would be useful in the future?

Current translated materials in French: http://www.aidsmap.com/cms1176923.asp

Current translated materials in Spanish (with GTT, Spain): http://www.aidsmap.com/cms1176921.asp

Current translated materials in Portuguese (with GAT, Portugal): http://www.aidsmap.com/cms1176922.asp

Current translated materials in Russian: http://www.aidsmap.com/cms1038155.asp