Three major reports have been published recently about HIV prevention and how it is failing those most vulnerable.
The first reports comes from UNAIDS and the World Bank and concerns five sub-Saharan countries: Kenya, Lesotho, Swaziland, Uganda and Mozambique. The survey was conducted to find out how and where most HIV infections were occurring in each country, and whether existing prevention efforts and expenditure matched these findings.
An IRIN report noted that “In Lesotho, where nearly one in four are living with HIV, an analysis of national prevalence and behavioural data …

Bangkok World AIDS Day 2006 © peripheries

According to the Bangkok Post, Thailand Deputy Public Health Minister Manit Nopamornbode said that “about 11,700 people were expected to become new [HIV/AIDS] sufferers”.
Amongst these new sufferers, Manit identified “women who will get HIV from their lovers [...] gay men who have unprotected sex [..] men who get HIV from sex workers [and] will infect their wives, intravenous drug users, those having casual sex and prostitutes”
Children excluded, that is pretty much everybody.
Depending on the sources, there are between 516,000 t0 610,000 people living with …

There exists an ageless belief that science is a free-thinking environment where dedicated people happily share information about their work for the goodness and well being of Mankind. Sorry to disappoint the reader, but this is wishful thinking. Distributing and accessing peer-reviewed scientific information might become more difficult as commented elsewhere and for instance this post refers to scientific information available only to the “chosen one”, or those whose employer can afford to pay for it. But what is ironic, is that the subject of this post is itself one …

Thailand is often hailed as a success story in the fight against HIV and AIDS when back in the 90s the Thai government implemented a 100% condom policy in brothels and amongst sex workers. But there is an area where Thailand has failed deplorably, it is in providing treatment and care to its injecting drug users of whom half are thought to be HIV-positive.
“The people we work with who are drug users, many of them injecting drug users, almost all of them are HIV-positive, yet none of them have access …