10 April 2017
"If I have sex, I could go to jail." This is the reality of life for women living with HIV in Canada. It's a story I heard a few weeks ago from an African woman who had recently immigrated to Vancouver and is now faced with the profoundly isolating experience of being a Black HIV-positive woman in Canadian society. This may come as a surprise to anyone unfamiliar with HIV in Canada: Women (and men) who are living with HIV…
24 April 2017
The World Health Organization (WHO) recently issued the first Consolidated guideline on sexual and reproductive health and rights of women living with HIV. The guidance is written for health care providers and aims to support them to provide effective care to meet the sexual and reproductive health needs and rights of women living with HIV. In addition to clinical recommendations, the guideline emphasises the importance of…
12 April 2017
India has passed a landmark bill which aims to ensure equal rights for those living with HIV/AIDS. The HIV and AIDS (Prevention and Control) Bill, passed by the country's parliament on Tuesday, will make it illegal to discriminate against people living with and affected by HIV. It is the first of its kind in south Asia, and will make India the largest country in the world to ban this kind of discrimination.
15 April 2017
Horcelie Sinda Wa Mbongo was only 11 years old when she discovered that she was HIV positive. The 22-year-old Fine Arts student, who hails from the Democratic Republic of Congo and lives in the UK, was born with HIV. And now, she is campaigning to end the stigma around HIV/AIDS.
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14 April 2017
You're invited to join a webinar with the World Health Organization (WHO) on the newly released guidance on hormonal contraceptive eligibility for women at high risk of HIV. It is scheduled to take place on Wednesday, April 26 at 9 a.m. U.S.-East Coast, 3 p.m. South Africa, 4 p.m. Eastern Africa.
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5 April 2017
The Treatment Action Campaign’s Norah Mathe – now 25 years old and healthy – is on a mission to change the fact that although one in every 10 South Africans has HIV, only about a quarter of young people know how the virus is transmitted. These are the figures according the latest Human Sciences Research Council’s study on HIV prevalence.
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5 April 2017
An international group of researchers involved in the ANRS 12174 randomised controlled trial of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for infants say that it is high time we started giving PrEP to all breastfed babies of HIV-positive mothers in countries where the likelihood of transmission via breastfeeding remains significant.
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3 April 2017
“We have high youth unemployment and high teenage pregnancy,” Mr. Obed, a traditional leader in Shiselweni, Swaziland, told UNFPA. Yet many conservative, rural communities have resisted publicly discussing topics that would improve the health and rights of young people – including adolescent pregnancy, gender-based violence and sexually transmitted infections like HIV.
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9 April 2017
Reporter Bridget Mananavire talks to village health worker Mandy Mugari of Seke, Zimbabwe who plays an essential role in the primary health system to fight against HIV/AIDS. She explains her mission to expand access to HIV prevention, treatment, and care under very difficult conditions, and the potential to achieve sustainable epidemic control and end AIDS as a public health threat.
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On Thursday, 6 April 2017 Athena Network will be launching the #WhatWomenWant campaign to share and spread the word about what adolescent girls and young women want. This campaign will be used as a vehicle to amplify adolescent girls and young women's voices, connect with others, and build across and between issues, sectors, and movements. The campaign calls for sustained investments in women-led partnerships and feminist organizing to…
23 March 2017
A counsellor at the local AIDS Secretariat [in Antigua and Barbuda] said that its records have shown a reverse trend in the transmission of the HIV virus, as the rate of infection among females has increased. Oswald Hannays said the discovery is worthy of note because, “where in the early [stages] you had perhaps five to six males for every female that were infected, we now have an almost even one to one ratio.” The…
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…
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,…
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.
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…
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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