Recent news
November 2010
Increased support from policymakers, scientists, and the public needed to advance HIV prevention research, opinion piece says
November 30, 2010 -- A “series of promising new scientific results in prevention, including three breakthrough trials in just 16 months, offer the first glimmer of hope that we may finally be able to achieve the ‘three zeros’—zero new infections, zero stigma/discrimination, and zero AIDS deaths—Jeffrey Sturchio, president and CEO of the Global Health Council, Ward Cates, president of research at Family Health International (FHI), and Salim Abdool Karim, director of Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA), write in a Huffington Post opinion piece. According to the authors, there have been several recent successes in HIV/AIDS research, including the release of the RV144 trial in Thailand, which “provided the first evidence of the effectiveness of any vaccine in preventing HIV infection.” In addition, earlier this year CAPRISA, with FHI and CONRAD as partners, released a study that showed a notable reduction in the risk of HIV infection associated with an experimental microbicide gel that contained the antiretroviral drug tenofovir. “But perhaps the greatest excitement centers on pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), involving preventive use of antiretroviral drugs already proven in HIV/AIDS treatment,” the authors write. They add that because “the science is so promising, we urge everyone—from scientists to policymakers to the public—to use World AIDS Day, Dec. 1, as a catalyst to build on these advances by mobilizing communities to embrace HIV prevention as a social norm and advocate for the funding required for the next round of research. Much work remains to be done, but by building support for these critical next steps, we can also build hope for a future World AIDS Day free of AIDS.” See the link below for more details.
