Via PlusNews A former politician, diplomat and aid worker, few people have witnessed the fight against HIV from as many international vantage points as former UN Special Envoy for AIDS in Africa, Stephen Lewis. Now co-director of the international advocacy organization, AIDS-Free World, Lewis spoke to IRIN/PlusNews about the direction of the international response to HIV. Excerpt: Read More >>

Via PlusNews UNAIDS has released a new policy brief to help countries make intellectual property rights work for them, amid growing concern that an impending free trade agreement between the European Union (EU) and India could threaten the world’s supply of generic antiretroviral (ARV) drugs. The World Trade Organization’s Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Read More >>

UNAIDS Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic 2010 View more presentations from UNAIDS. [If an item is not written by an IRMA member, it should not be construed that IRMA has taken a position on the article’s content, whether in support or in opposition.]

Hot off the UNAIDS presses More unaids Article on the report via BBC: HIV epidemic ‘halted’, says UN [If an item is not written by an IRMA member, it should not be construed that IRMA has taken a position on the article’s content, whether in support or in opposition.]

From UNAIDS Today Two-thirds of countries in the Caribbean continue to criminalize homosexuality. Where homophobia is institutionalized in the law, stigma and discrimination against men who have sex with men is pronounced. Homophobia blocks access to HIV prevention programmes and impacts the quality of care for people living with HIV. “Imagine yourself as a gay man in Read More >>

From Myanmar Times, by Khin Myat Experts from non-government organisations working in the HIV prevention field say the proportion of new HIV infections attributed to husband-to-wife transmission is likely to increase over the next five years. Dr Khin Zar Li Aye, a monitoring and evaluation officer at the United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), said that by Read More >>

via Kaiser Family Foundation Experts gathered at a joint meeting of UNAIDS and the WHO last week called for two additional clinical trials to test the effectiveness and safety of a microbicide vaginal gel containing the antiretroviral tenofovir, which previous studies have shown reduces the risk of HIV transmission in women who used it before and after Read More >>

Via UNAIDS Approximately half of the world’s population lives in cities. By 2050, seven out of ten global citizens will be living in a “mega-city” of more than 10 million people. In an official visit this week to Shanghai—one of the world’s largest metropolises—UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé called attention to the central role that cities can Read More >>

Who and what is this “We”, what authority does this “We” have to make such a statement, what power and means does this “We” have to empower men who have sex with men, sex workers, and transgender people? by Roger Tatoud,IRMA Steering Committee MemberSenior Programme Manager, International HIV Clinical Trials Research Management Office at Imperial College, London Read More >>

Via PlusNews A new study has challenged widely held assumptions about income level in relation to HIV, finding that neither wealth nor poverty are reliable predictors of HIV infection in Africa. Previously, the argument that poverty drove HIV epidemics was supported by the World Bank and UNAIDS, as well as less reliable authorities like former South African Read More >>