HIV prevention goes far beyond the simplistic ABC. This figure hopes to illustrate the breadth and diversity of the field of HIV prevention (click to enlarge). This is version 2 with major additions in the “Political Interventions”, inclusion of “Prevention Interventions” which desserves a graph in itself as would the “Social Interventions” branch, a reorganised “Harm Reduction” section and an extended “KYS” section. There is probably a lot more to add.

The use of “People-Centered” is second-best for interventions that built on the needs of those they aim to reach as …

In a study published in Retrovirology, Dimitrios Paraskevis and his team at the University of Athens tracked how tourists got infected with HIV whilst on holiday and how HIV piggybacks on migrants traveling from one country to another.

Significant HIV migratory pathways across Europe.
Arrowheads indicate the targets of migration shown in
different colours and styles by country of origin.

“Specifically, Greece, Portugal, Serbia and Spain, provide sources shedding HIV-1; Austria, Belgium and Luxembourg, on the other hand, are migratory targets, while for Denmark, Germany, Italy, Israel, Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the …

Since the papal comment about condoms and the HIV epidemic, there has been a flurry of articles written in support of the pontifical nonsense. These often call upon a comparison between “sinful” Thailand, awash with HIV and condoms, and the “holly” Philippines where there is not such thing as HIV or condoms (a bit like in Iran).
Does this sound slightly over the top? Not really. Kathleen Gilbert writing for the LifesSiteNews website quotes Yolly Eileen Gamutam, head of the Asia’s Catholic Association of Doctors, Nurses and Health Professionals (ACIM-Asia) saying …

To assess the extent of global progress on HIV/AIDS among Men who have Sex with Men (MSM), amfAR reviewed 5 HIV indicators relevant to MSM for 128 UNGASS country progress reports for Latin America, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, Asia and the Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa.

HIV prevalence amongst MSM

Countries reporting on MSM

Percentage of MSM living with HIV

Percentage of MSM who have used a condom
the last time they had sex

Percentage of MSM who have taken an
HIV test during the last year

Percentage of MSM who know
how to prevent …

Why HIV “prevention does not work” has been the subject of recurrent discussions during the past weeks. It all started with a thought-provoking article published online by Frontiers in LA, “a one-stop source of content for Southern California’s LGBT community” (welcome to the Ghetto) by Michael Liberatore who wrote that “if pharmaceutical companies were supplying the cash to develop [HIV/AIDS] treatments, couldn’t they just as easily stall the development of newer, less profit-friendly treatments to assure that their bank accounts continue to swell?”
The article is worth reading and raises some …