19 December 2017
On December 17, Grand Challenges Canada announced 18 projects extending innovative forms of health-related lifelines to reach women and girls across the world. The projects embrace a range of creative products and services to advance gender equality, promote human dignity and empower women and girls. Two projects receiving large investments involve innovative approaches to improving menstrual, sexual and reproductive…
18 December 2017
Kenya is among seven African countries chosen to carry out large-scale trials for an injectable HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for women without HIV. The clinical trials of the new, long-acting injectable drug known as cabotegravir (CAB) will be conducted among 3,200 HIV-uninfected, sexually active women in Uganda, Botswana, Malawi, Swaziland, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya. The trial is meant to examine the…
12 December 2017
Evidence clearly shows the links between gender-based violence (GBV) and HIV – both as cause and consequences of women and girls' vulnerability to HIV. In some areas, women who were physically or sexually abused by an intimate partner are up to twice more likely to get HIV. Young women and adolescent girls represent 60% of newly infected worldwide and 22% in West Africa have increased vulnerability. Benin is no…
6 December 2017
This letter comes from a group of young African women and reflects their HIV prevention research priorities. It was submitted to the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Division of AIDS (DAIDS) during the open-comment period concerning the structure and agenda for its next funding cycle (2021-2027).
"Dear Dr. Carl Dieffenbach,
We are eight young women from South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe who were…
8 December 2017
The nonprofit International Partnership for Microbicides (IPM) announced today that it has received a DKK 20 million (USD 3.2 million) award over four years from the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs to advance innovative HIV and multipurpose prevention products designed to empower women with self-initiated tools they could use to protect their sexual and reproductive health. The grant will help support IPM’s regulatory…
1 December 2017
Shedding light on the activism of women living with the viruses, the film began to take shape in the early 2000s while Harriet Hirshorn, the movie's producer and director, was living in France. She worked with a researcher doing a feasibility study on the economic impact of making HIV/AIDS treatment…
1 December 2017
The International Community of Women Living with HIV (ICW) joins our members, partners, policy makers and stakeholders all over the world in celebration of World AIDS Day 2017.
This World AIDS Day, ICW is proud to share our new Joint Policy Brief: HIV Prevention that…
1 December 2017
Every four minutes, three young women become infected with HIV (UNAIDS Right to Health report, 2017). They are…
1 December 2017
Today, as we commemorate World AIDS Day and celebrate the steady progress that has been made against the epidemic, 2,000 women will become infected with HIV. Tomorrow, another 2,000 women — many of them young women and girls living in sub-Saharan Africa — will join them. The next day, another 2,000. You get the picture.
The bottom line is that women bear the brunt of the HIV epidemic. HIV/AIDS is the leading cause…
1 December 2017
Michel Sidibé
Executive Director of UNAIDS
Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations
This World AIDS Day, we are highlighting the importance of the right to health and the challenges that people living with and affected by HIV face in fulfilling that right.
The right to health is a fundamental human right—everybody has the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and…
24 November 2017
In the United States, men are roughly four times more likely to be diagnosed with HIV than women. However, the one group that reaches and sometimes exceeds that of men is women in jails and prisons. According to the most recent numbers from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1.3 percent of women in prisons are living with HIV. Comparatively, the HIV prevalence among the general female population is 0.14 percent. That…
24 November 2017
According to Luiz Loures, Deputy Executive Director (Programme) of UNAIDS, HIV infection continues to spread among women and the gay community in Latin America largely due to violence and discrimination that affect both groups. “The rise in the number of infections is occurring among young women and gay men, both of whom live in situations of discrimination,”he said. Because they are discriminated against, he added,…
8 November 2017
Civil society organisations working on HIV and human rights in Africa recently condemned the enactment of repressive laws which often include provisions that criminalise HIV transmission, non-disclosure and exposure.The organisations delivered the statement at the 61st ordinary session of the African Commission on Human and People's Rights in Gambia last month. Some of these laws also often provide for compulsory HIV…
10 November 2017
For many young people the experience of going to a clinic to access services such as HIV testing and treatment can be very daunting. In South Africa, studies show nearly a third of new HIV infections are in adolescent girls and young women (aged 15-24), who are becoming infected at eight times the rate of their male peers.
”In most cases young people don’t feel comfortable to share the same space as their elders…
13 November 2017
The Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network (CAAN) announces Indigenous leadership will gather on November 30, 2017 in Ottawa, ON for a Parliamentary Breakfast to launch Aboriginal AIDS Awareness Week 2017. It will be followed December 1 - 6, 2017 by events across the country (Vancouver, Edmonton, Regina, Winnipeg, Iqaluit, Toronto, and more) to unite an Indigenous response to HIV and AIDS in a parallel theme to international…
10 November 2017
In Papa New Guinea, the risk of acquiring HIV is up to 7 times higher in women with violent or controlling intimate partners. The regional manager of the National AIDS Council Secretariat, Valentine Tango stated that "gender-based violence is a major driver of HIV in women. It affects the ability of women and girls to protect themselves from HIV, prevent unintended pregnancies or access HIV prevention services." He also…
1 November 2017
“A Paradigm Shift: The Impact of HIV/AIDS on African American Women and Families”, running Nov. 2-3 at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, takes a women-centered approach toward HIV, sexually transmitted diseases, and reproductive health – something that has rarely been explored, says Gail Wyatt, professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior,…
23 October 2017
October 23 marks the Day of Action to End Violence Against Women Living With HIV, organized annually by the Positive Women’s Network–USA. This year, the group highlighted the intersectoins between economic security, health and violence against women living with HIV. This day of action is necessary because:
27 October 2017
The Philippines' Commission on Population (POPCOM) came out with new way to reach more young people in its continuing campaign to address teenage pregnancy and HIV/AIDS. A total of 200 junior high school students from the cities of Surigao, Cabadbaran, Butuan and the province of Agusan del Norte joined the Adolescent Health and Development (AHD) Film Dissemination conducted in said areas, respectively. The selected short…
31 October 2017
In a meeting with women living with HIV in Abuja, Nigeria, UNAIDS spokesperson Richard Amenya said that West and Central Africa requires urgent access to HIV treatment. Coordinated and concerted efforts are especially needed to scale up interventions for women and children living with HIV.
One of the outcomes of the meeting of women living with HIV is to suggest ways to improve funding and access to anti-…