Children playing in the centre of Phnom Penh. Prohibitive school fees are one of the reasons children do not attend school, notwithstanding the bribe requested by corrupt teachers to let pupils in.
Photo (c) peripheries

Prostitution and sex work are particularly difficult subjects to comment on. They are heavily loaded with emotional and often irrational charge especially when trafficking and children are taken into consideration. I would usually leave these topics to more qualified commentators such as Laura Agustin, but I’ll make an exception when HIV is involved.
What prompted this posting is …

From Entebbe, Uganda – The New Vision, a Uganda daily, has been a never-ending source of inspiration all week and today was no exception with the publication of two articles on bride’s and groom’s virginity at the time of tying the knot.
In all societies and since time immemorial, the bride’s virginity has been praised, sought and defended until the last minute. What was interesting in today’s articles is that they are mostly about the bride’s virginity and how important it is for the groom. Thought the second article is about …

Abstinence and faithfulness are often promoted as the only and best forms of protection against HIV infection. If the theory is true, in the real world abstinence and faithfulness have shown an impressive rate of failure. In a couple it takes two for it to work, and when single it takes an extremely powerfull mind to resist the call of nature, particularly under 30 (or more for some).
In a study published in Plos One, Keren Landman and colleagues examined the association between the number of sexual partners and HIV infection …

The criminalisation of HIV transmission or exposure has been a recurrent topics of the XVII International AIDS Conference with five major sessions and at least 20 different oral or poster presentations.
“Criminal HIV transmission and exposure laws spreading around the world ‘like a virus’” write Edwin J. Bernard at Aidsmap where he also reports on Justice Cameron’s plenary presentation about HIV criminalisation arround the world.
In his presentation, Judge Cameroon gives ten reasons why criminal prosecutions are bad policy:

Criminalisation is ineffective.
Criminal laws and criminal prosecutions are a poor substitutes for measures that …

Reporting on the role of circumcision in the “combination prevention” discussed during the 2008 AIDS conference, Roger Peabody from Aidmaps noted that “In response to several criticisms of the recommended roll-out of circumcision, Catherine Hankins from UNAIDS insisted that circumcision had to be seen as part of combination prevention” – in other words, it is one extra choice, rather than the replacement for another intervention.”
But in the same session, Mogomotsi Supreme Mafalapitsa noted that circumcision is often imbued with religious and cultural meanings, and very often forms part of …