Categories
Default

South Africans Are Living Longer, Mostly Thanks to HIV Treatment

Antiretroviral medicines have been a success, but more work is needed to reach United Nations targets South Africa has some state-run systems that are working well. One of these is the HIV treatment programme. We quite possibly have the largest public sector chronic medicine programme for a single disease anywhere in the world. Of the […]

Categories
Default

Rwanda: Young Women and Girls Face Higher HIV Risk – UN Report

Young women and girls are more than twice as likely to contract HIV as young men and boys, a new report indicates. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report notes that nearly 98,000 adolescent females worldwide tested positive for the virus in 2022. ALSO READ: Africa’s new strategies to eliminate HIV/AIDS Experts suggest that cultural […]

Categories
Default

South Africa: In-Depth – HIV Prevention Shots and Vaginal Rings – This Is Why SA Pilots Have Not Yet Started

Last year Spotlight reported that pilot projects testing out a new HIV prevention injection and a vaginal ring in South Africa would start early in 2023. Yet, as delegates gathered for the 11th SA AIDS Conference in Durban last week, those pilots hadn’t yet started. The latest estimates from Thembisa, the leading mathematical model of […]

Categories
Default

Nigerians With HIV Are Stigmatised – Study Shows Support From Family and Friends Is Crucial to Well-Being

Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the regions most affected by HIV. In Nigeria alone, an estimated 1.8 million people are living with the virus. Antiretroviral therapy has made strong gains in reducing HIV-related deaths. But people living with HIV in resource-constrained settings, like Nigeria, still face psychological challenges and poor health outcomes that are attributed […]

Categories
Default

Kenyan Health Workers On Alert Over U.S. Funding for HIV/Aids Fight

When Minne Gachau’s husband died from AIDS-related complications in 2006, she was still in denial about being HIV-positive herself – too scared to confide in friends and relatives in her home in Nakuru, a city in Kenya’s Rift Valley. It was only after the couple’s young son also tested positive and started to receive antiretroviral […]