30 January 2017
Married for 17 years, Longok had no idea she was HIV positive until she heard rumors suggesting her husband was living with HIV and got herself tested. “I was so shocked because in my heart I knew that I have never cheated on my husband and he had found me a virgin when he married me at the age of 16,” says Mwatum Kitui Longok, a mother of six, from Moroto, a remote district located in Karamoja, north-eastern Uganda.…
20 February 2017
New analysis of data detailing the extent of sexual violence in the Rustenburg area, South Africa, indicates that one in five HIV infections (approximately 6,765 of all female cases) and one in three cases of depression among women (5,022 cases) are attributable to rape and intimate-partner violence (IPV), while one in three women inducing abortion (1,296 cases) was pregnant as a result of sexual violence.
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9 February 2017
Opinion Piece: Chances are very high that by this time next year if you are still alive, 26,000 girls will be living with HIV if we are to go by a report released by the Uganda Aids Commission a few days back. If this trend continues, by 2029, chances are high that your daughter or grand daughter may be among those living with HIV. On the other hand, your son, grandson or even your husband might be on the flip side of…
8 February 2017
Thailand has become the first Asian country to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV, thanks to a pragmatic multi-sector response backed by strong political commitment and heavy government investment, a new study reports. Such an early, concerted response allowed the country to successfully address the four prongs of the recommended World Health Organization (WHO) elimination strategy. As a result, MTCT…
10 February 2017
A new project in Lesotho combines a mobile healthcare app, a mobile payment service and a fleet of traveling clinics to help HIV-positive women in remote areas get lifesaving medication and support. Less than a year after the launch of a project that uses mobile phone apps to help give HIV-positive women and children in two Lesotho districts better access to treatment, the initiative has proved so successful…
13 February 2017
A new HIV prevention measure, Dapivirine Ring, which has up to seventy-one per cent ability to protect users from contracting the virus has proved to be super-effective, according to preliminary research results by University of North Carolina (UNC) and John Hopkins. Speaking during a training workshop organized by journalists association against Aids (Journaids) at Bridge View Hotel in Lilongwe, UNC project study…
10 February 2017
Women initiated on anti-retroviral drugs based on how sick they are, are more likely to continue and adhere to treatment compared to those who are initiated bcause they are pregnant, a recent study on adherence of ARVs in pregnant woman has shown. Presenting study results in Harare yesterday, Clinton Health Access Initiative country director Mr Alexio Mangwiro said of the 1,150 women who took part in the study, 8,5…
7 February 2017
South African women with pro-inflammatory bacteria that dominates vaginal microbiomes have more than a 4-fold higher risk of acquiring HIV than those with healthy vaginal bacteria, a recent study indicates. An estimated 24 million individuals in sub-Saharan Africa are infected with HIV. According to UNAIDS, young African women have up to an 8-fold higher rate of HIV prevalence compared with young men.
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4 February 2017
On World Cancer Day, UNAIDS is calling for all women living with HIV to have access to information about the human papillomavirus (HPV) and to be offered cervical cancer screening and treatment if necessary. Cervical cancer is preventable and, if caught early, treatable. However, around half of the estimated 500 000 women who are diagnosed with cervical cancer every year die from the disease.
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8 February 2017
Women are more likely than men to have poor adherence to combination antiretroviral therapy (cART), according to Canadian research published in HIV Medicine. Adherence was monitored in a cohort of over 4000 people in British Columbia over 14 years. After controlling for injecting drug use (IDU) and ethnicity, 57% of women and 77% of men attained optimum 95% adherence.
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3 February 2017
Most women do not know that pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) may be an HIV prevention option for them, panelists noted at the recent PrEP for Women: The San Francisco Story webinar sponsored by HIVE. Prevention messages around San Francisco are primarily targeted at men who have sex with men. The San Francisco Department of Public Health does not even cover the cost of HIV testing for women. To help educate women about…
27 January 2017
Nearly five years ago, when Safaa was 26 and a mother of two, she discovered that she had HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) - a disease which destroys the immune system of its host. To her, this was worse than a death sentence - it would force her to keep her medical history secret from even her closest relatives for the rest of her life. Fearing that her relatives would not accept the news of her infection, she managed…
1 December 2016
For millennia, childbirth was the leading cause of death among women of reproductive age. While still an important cause of death, the leading killer worldwide is now HIV/AIDS, with the highest burden in sub-Saharan Africa. There has been undeniable progress in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Rates of new HIV infections have been reduced by 6 percent since 2010, and more people than ever are now taking lifesaving…
8 January 2017
A delegation of women living with HIV from Dailekh and Bajura submitted a memorandum to Health Minister Gagan Thapa at his office yesterday. Women from Bajura’s Bahrabisa and Dailekh’s Rakam came to the capital to draw the minister’s attention towards the present plight of HIV victims in the memorandum. They also submitted copies of the memorandum to Women’s Commission and the National Centre for AIDS & STD Control.…
16 January 2017
There is a question that Saara Greene says comes up early when she speaks with HIV-positive women: "Would I get charged if I was raped?" Greene, an associate professor of social work at McMaster University in Hamilton, said she and her team of community-based researchers hear this often during workshops with women about the criminalization of HIV non-disclosure.
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2 January 2017
Immigrant women living with HIV often juggle multiple identities, all of which are the target of discrimination and stigma: HIV status, female gender, person of color, foreign accent and/or poor command of English. Many also come from countries with a high prevalence of HIV and/or have experienced trauma and abuse during their journey to the U.S.
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21 November 2016
Urgent action is needed to help and protect girls and young women from Aids in sub-Saharan Africa, thousands of whom are still being infected with HIV every week, the UN says. Many adolescent girls do not know they have the virus and do not seek help or get treatment because they cannot tell their families they have had a sexual relationship with an older man.
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11 January 2017
Reports of HIV-positive women who have been coerced, forced or tricked into being sterilized reveal how widespread this practice is in Africa, but human rights activists say governments are doing little to stop it.
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22 November 2016
New HIV infections among adolescent girls and young women fell by only 6% between 2010 and 2015. This puts the HIV response severely off-track to reach the target of less than 100,000 new HIV infections among this group by 2020. With 7,500 women aged 15-24 becoming infected with HIV every week in 2015, a staggering 74% reduction is needed in the four years to 2020 to reach the first of the UNAIDS Fast-Track strategy…
14 December 2016
Analyses from two large household surveys in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa shed new light on the dynamics of HIV transmission in the South African province that is hardest hit by HIV. Adolescent girls and young women typically acquire HIV from men several years older than themselves, while older men usually acquire HIV from women of their own age. Men and women who migrate just 50km away from home are more likely to…