24 March 2017
A new meta-analysis has identified several strains of human papillomavirus (HPV) that may warrant special attention for women infected with HIV. Immunodeficiency associated with HIV infection is believed to adversely affect the health of women who also have HPV. Not only are women with HIV believed to have an increased risk of acquiring an HPV infection, the risk of developing cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (also known as…
7 March 2017
There are an estimated 101,000 people living with HIV in the UK, 31% of whom are women. Yet women living with HIV are frequently invisible, their specific needs, experiences and challenges unrecognised, and their voices unheard. The public narrative around HIV often centres on gay men, and women are left behind. This creates the experience of being a ‘minority within a minority’, a phrase I’ve heard frequently during my PhD…
31 March 2017
Maurine Murenga is a wife and mother from Kenya who is changing the world for the better. Murenga has openly lived with HIV since 2002. Because of her experience with the disease, she wanted to help young women and adolescent girls in her country who also have the disease. The Lean on Me foundation that she created in 2008 now helps 7,290 women and teen girls in Kenya.
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7 March 2017
African women have made significant progress including higher female participation in many legislatures than in Britain and the United States -- but women on the continent also face “daunting” challenges in high rates of sexual violence, maternal mortality and HIV infections, said a report released Tuesday.
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27 March 2017
Ana Luisa Neves (final year PhD student) has won the 2nd prize in Imperial College’s flagship women entrepreneurship programme Althea-Imperial for her prototype finger prick test that brings prenatal care to pregnant women living in isolated areas. Ana’s team which included Andrea Rodriguez-Martinez (PhD student with CSM) pitched the idea for a single device to measure four health indicators for pregnant women, specifically…
21 March 2017
A recent review of evidence on hormonal contraceptives and the risk of HIV acquisition motivated the World Health Organization to change its safety rating of progestogen-only injectables. It remains to be seen what that change will mean, if anything, for conversations between family planning providers and patients.
13 March 2017
After a second wave of intensive household testing, a large study of the 'test and treat' strategy in Zambia is diagnosing more people with HIV, getting more people onto treatment and reducing the time between diagnosis and starting treatment, findings from the PopART study presented last month at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI 2017) show.
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19 February 2017
For the last year, Brandi Cooper has taken a once-a-day pill to help protect herself from HIV. It's simple and proven effective, and the Philadelphia woman has enthusiastically shared her find with perhaps 10 other women. Most had never heard of it; only one has taken her suggestion. That, in a nutshell, is the problem facing PrEP for women.
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27 March 2017
As a part of her two-week tour across the United States, Kenyan women’s health and global fund advocate Maurine Murenga lectured about global issues surrounding HIV/AIDS at the University of Iowa on March 24. Murenga was diagnosed with with HIV during her first pregnancy in the early 2000s. She aims to dissuade stigmas around the disease, and promote treatment for women and children.
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27 March 2017
Patience Eshun, a widowed grandmother from Ghana who lost her daughter last year to HIV, knows how destructive HIV-related discrimination can be. “My daughter refused to go hospital to receive medicines. My daughter died because of the fear of stigmatization and discrimination,” she said.
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24 March 2017
Ayushi Tripathi is a student at Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi, a city in India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh. This week, she joined 27 other students for a three-day workshop to raise young people’s awareness of their sexual and reproductive health and rights. The training was led by the Dove Foundation, a youth-led organization based in Varanasi and supported by UNAIDS. The advocacy materials used were developed…
8 March 2017
On International Women’s Day UNAIDS has released a new report which shows that there is an urgent need to scale up HIV prevention and treatment services for women and girls. The report, 'When women lead, change happens,' shows that globally in 2015, there were 18.6 million women and girls living with HIV, 1 million women and girls became newly infected with HIV and 470 000 women and girls died of AIDS-related illnesses.
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16 March 2017
First Lady [of Namibia] Monica Geingos, who is a mother of a teenager and a young adult, says the only way to get HIV-AIDS awareness through to the youth is to speak to them in their language. “I am speaking from experience,” she told local and international participants at a debate on 'Building a stronger HIV prevention movement in sub-Saharan Africa' at Swakopmund last week.
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21 March 2017
Through the project called Accelerating children’s HIV/AIDS Treatment Initiative (ACT), Malawi Girl Guides Association (MAGGA) has taken a step further by lobbying adolescents aged (10-19) to go for HIV testing for them to know their status and get linked for treatment. With funding from the United States Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the US president’s Emergence Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) through…
21 March 2017
Outright discrimination against women with HIV in healthcare environments is a problem in Ukraine. The report Positive Women and other activists filed with the UN last month has several stories of HIV-positive women being denied access to health care because of their HIV status. The numbers tell a story of how health care providers can discriminate against HIV-positive women across Ukraine, and how many of these women don’t…
8 March 2017
To end this unjust and daunting reality for adolescent girls and young women, the world must work faster and harder in the fight against HIV. Governments and development partners must meaningfully engage with us not only in the fight against HIV, but also in holistic aspects of development - education, economic opportunity, reproductive health. As empowered adolescent girls and young women, we will not only defeat HIV, but we…
7 March 2017
International AIDS Society (IAS) Member Viewpoint: Over the past quarter century since my HIV diagnosis, I have had the good fortune to meet hundreds of extraordinary women who also have this bug in their bodies. As one of the estimated17.8 million women living with HIV worldwide, I want to raise our voices this International Women’s Day and share the six simple things you should know about being a woman living with HIV. It is…
March 2017
There are two main challenges that women face: the biological differences that make women more vulnerable to HIV infection; and the gender norms and inequality that are unfortunately still part of many societies around the world. Female sexuality is still something that is ignored or even denied in many countries. Acknowledging women as sexual beings is very difficult for many male-dominated societies, especially when they also…
8 March 2017
There is a saying in South Africa: Wathint’ abafazi, wathint’ imbokodo. You strike the women, you strike the rock. On International Women’s Day, we want to celebrate the strong women who have always been at the heart of fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic. For more than 35 years, women have modeled strength and resilience as researchers, nurses and physicians, caregivers, volunteers, advocates, social workers, and community leaders…
9 March 2017
Before the gold standard in HIV treatment—called HAART, for “highly active antiretroviral therapy”—came along in the mid-90s, untreated people could expect to live about 10 years after they were infected by HIV. HAART, a combination of several HIV drugs, transformed HIV from a death sentence to a chronic, survivable condition, prolonging life by several decades. Within two years of becoming available, it lowered HIV mortality…