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 mg.co.za, by Mia Malan South African guidelines for the preventative use of HIV medication by men who have sex with men who are not infected with the virus are to be published in the peer-reviewed academic publication, Southern African Journal of HIV Medicine, this month. The treatment, pre-exposure prophylaxis (Prep), consists of an antiretroviral (ARV) pill Read More >>

via sahivsoc.org, by Rebe K, De Swardt G, Struthers H, McIntyre JA Until fairly recently, the healthcare needs of men who have sex with men (MSM) have been under-researched and under-resourced in South Africa.1 This has occurred despite emerging local evidence confirming high rates of HIV among this most at risk or key population (MARP). Notwithstanding inclusion Read More >>

via Leadership, by Winifred Ogbebo *Mentions IRMA advocate Morenike Ukpong!* Like a breath of fresh air, the news that a combination prevention drug would soon hit the Nigerian market is definitely something to cheer about, given Nigeria’s high prevalence of HIV rate, which is said to be second only to South Africa in the African continent. WINIFRED Read More >>

via PLoS One, by Bradley H. Wagenaar, Patrick S. Sullivan, Rob Stephenson Introduction Since the emergence of HIV as a global pandemic in the 1980s, men who have sex with men (MSM) have shared a disproportionately large burden of infection in many high-income countries in Western and Central Europe, Australia, and North America. Due to this recognized Read More >>

via MedPage Today, by Ed Susman Pre-exposure prophylaxis with antiretroviral drugs failed to prevent women in Africa from becoming infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) – apparently because more than half the women failed to take their medication. The incidence of HIV infection among previously uninfected women treated with a co-formulation of emtricitabine and tenofovir (Truvada) was Read More >>

via NY Times, by Donald G. McNeil, Jr. Shortly after Michel Sidibé became executive director of the United Nations’ AIDS prevention agency, a court in Senegal sentenced nine gay men, all AIDS educators, to eight years in prison for “unnatural acts.” In one of his first moves as the new chief of U.N.AIDS, Mr. Sidibe flew to Read More >>

via BBC HARDtalk, Interview with Edwin Cameron Living as an openly gay man in socially conservative Africa is hard enough, but Edwin Cameron went even further. He was the first public official in South Africa to reveal his HIV positive status. Nelson Mandela appointed him a judge and he now serves on South Africa’s Constitutional Court. There Read More >>

viaAllAfrica, interview with Professor Salim Abdool Karim Professor Salim Abdool Karim, director of the Centre for the AIDS Program of Research in South Africa (Caprisa) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and Columbia University in the United States, spoke to AllAfrica’s Julie Frederikse about the unexpected halt of a study into tenofovir vaginal gel. This followed a finding Read More >>

via allAfrica.com, by Julie Frederikse Africans tracking the worldwide HIV epidemic have not found much to celebrate since Aids began ravaging the continent 30 years ago, but researchers are optimistic that they are learning as much from their failures as their successes. Sub-Saharan Africa still carries the biggest burden of HIV worldwide, and while there has been Read More >>