via IRIN PlusNews “Key populations – such as MSM and sex workers – who need the lubricant the most, often get their health-related services from local NGOs, which are not often included in [HIV/AIDS] policies or broader [health] programmes,” explained Bidia Deperthes, a senior HIV adviser with UNFPA’s Comprehensive Condom Programming division in New York. KATHMANDU, 21 February Read More >>

via the Commission on HIV and the Law The end of the global AIDS epidemic is within our reach. This will only be possible if science and action are accompanied by a tangible commitment to respecting human dignity and ending injustice. Law prohibits or permits specific behaviours, and in so doing, it shapes politics, economics and society. Read More >>

via allAfrica, by Festus Mogae and Stephen Lewis In South Africa and across Africa, HIV continues to prey on women, sex workers and men who have sex with men. It is clear that to end the HIV epidemic, we must protect and support these groups. Archaic laws and customs make women and girls more vulnerable to HIV. Read More >>

via msmgf.org, by AHN ADDIS ABABA, 12 June 2012 (PlusNews) – More than 100 million condoms will be distributed annually to sex workers, men who have sex with men and other groups vulnerable to HIV as part of a new five-year programme to be run by the Ethiopian government and the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Read More >>

via observer.org.sz, by Winile Mavuso UNADJUSTED HIV prevalence among sex workers stands at 70.3%. This is contained in the Swaziland HIV Bio-Behavioral Surveillance Study and Qualitative Study among Most At-Risk Populations (MARPS) conducted by the Population Service International (PSI) in conjunction with the John Hopkins University based in the United States. The findings of the study were Read More >>

via The Jurist, by Elizabeth Hand Shohagi was only fourteen when her father arranged her marriage. Sent away from her home, family and friends to marry an unknown man who was much older, she quickly discovered her partner’s violent nature. The abuse sent her fleeing back home to a family that rejected her for disobeying her father, Read More >>

via New Vision, by Joyce Nyakato New research published in The Lancet, an international medical journal, has revealed that commercial sex workers in Uganda have one of the highest rates of HIV infections in the world. Some 99,878 female sex workers in 50 countries (14 in Asia, four in Eastern Europe, 11 in Latin America and the Read More >>

via Johns Hopkins School of Public Health Female sex workers in low- and middle-income countries are nearly 14 times more likely to be infected by HIV compared to the rest of country’s population, according to an analysis by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The findings suggest an urgent need to scale up Read More >>

via Nigerian Tribune, by Muda Oyeniran Not less than 12 percent of public secondary school students in Nigeria practise anal sex while 12.1 per cent of university students and 15.2 per cent adolescents in northern Nigeria engage in the act. Morenike Ukpong, the coordinator of the New Vaccine and Microbicide Advocacy Society, a Lagos-based non-governmental organisation, who Read More >>

Via UNAIDS. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the region most heavily affected by HIV, legal, policy and social barriers, including stigma, discrimination, gender inequality and the criminalization of key populations at higher risk of HIV infection, continue to make people vulnerable to HIV and hamper the ability of individuals, communities and states to respond to the epidemic. This was Read More >>