Find out a little about Stephen McGill in his mini-bio, the latest in IRMA’s “Meet a Friendly Rectal Microbicide Advocate” series on the IRMA website here.  Stephen is one of five new bios posted in the past week.   Stephen McGill Monrovia, Liberia  Stephen McGill, with an extensive background in public health, HIV/AIDS prevention, and human rights 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 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 AllAfrica.com, by Gloria Nakiyimba World politicians meeting in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, have agreed on the need to repeal laws discriminating against HIV/Aids which they say have contributed to an increase in the rate of new infections. MP’s at the Inter Parliamentary Union assembly said laws that criminalize transmission of HIV, laws against sexual workers and Read More >>

via Chicago Sun Times, by Frank Mugisha The world listened last week as Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf defended her country’s laws that discriminate against its lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex population. In an interview with the Guardian newspaper, she spoke of preserving Liberia’s “traditional values” and said in part, “We like ourselves the way we 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 PlusNews Global Uganda’s HIV/AIDS prevalence rate has risen from 6.4 percent to 6.7 percent, according to a recently released national AIDS Indicator Survey. The population-based HIV serological survey showed that 6.7 percent of adults aged between 15 and 49 were HIV-positive, while at least 500,000 people have been infected with the virus in the past five Read More >>

via New York Times, by Laurie Goodstein A Ugandan gay rights group filed suit against an American evangelist, Scott Lively, in federal court in Massachusetts on Wednesday, accusing him of violating international law by inciting the persecution of gay men and lesbians in Uganda. The lawsuit maintains that beginning in 2002, Mr. Lively conspired with religious and 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 >>