Treatment as a means to prevent HIV infection has hit the media following a declaration by Brian Williams, professor of epidemiology at the South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis in Stellenbosch, at the AAAS in San Diego.
Whilst the HIV epidemic has shown some signs of stabilisation in the recent years, more than 7,000 people are still infected every day with the virus that causes AIDS.
Despite interesting results of a vaccine trial in Thailand, prevention is still limited to a small number of options many of which are not …

In a recent posting at Aid Watch, William Easterly makes the very good point that we could help the poor more if we were to bypass dubious charitable scheme like Product Red. William Easterly points out that if you really want to support altruistic causes, you should do it directly rather than paying the business man and tipping the poor.

The question Easterly does not answer is why don’t we send our bucks or quids straight to the Global Fund instead of spending them at Starbucks?
Guilt, the one we feel knowing …

And would alternative policies deliver in the fight against HIV/AIDS?
This is what Rick Rowden, Senior Policy Analyst at ActionAid International USA, puts forward in his book “The Deadly Ideas of Neoliberalism: How the IMF has Undermined Public Health and the Fight Against AIDS”.

I have not read the book yet but went to the recent UK launch organised by the publisher Zed at the SOAS in London. I can only report on my first impressions about the thesis that IMF policies, by constraining and limiting health policies and budgets in poor …

The largest clinical trial of anti-retroviral therapy (ART) for people with HIV infection ever run in Africa has found that regular laboratory tests offer little additional clinical benefit to populations when compared to careful clinical monitoring.
The DART study was a controversial one that saw mislead and misleading activists trying to stop a study which outcome could contribute to save many lives.
The study published in The Lancet today concluded that “ART can be delivered safely without routine laboratory monitoring for toxic eff ects, but diff erences in disease progression suggest a …

IRIN/PlusNews has compiled a short list of the ways people refer to HIV/AIDS on the African continent.
Angola (Portuguese)
Pisar na mina – Contracting HIV is like having “stepped on a landmine”
Bichinho – “Little bug” (the virus)
Botswana (SeTswana)
Phamo kate – phamo “a quick snatch”, and kate “buried” (refers to AIDS)
Onale jwa radio – “He/she has the disease talked about on the radio” (radio is the primary method of disseminating HIV/AIDS knowledge)
Bolwestse jo booleng – “The illness that has befallen [us]” (euphemism for HIV and AIDS as a new illness)
Segajaja – meaning …