On the whole, where STIs are concerned, social media have tended to be considered as a potential force for the good in public health, offering a new resource for the management of HIV patients, or opportunities for disseminating health messages via peer education (Swanton & Mullan (STIs); Peer group education (STIs/blog)). Recently, however, there have […]
Latest articles
Incidental gonorrhoea screening in the general population via dual NAAT is no benefit
Fifer & Ison (STIs) express concern over the use of the “dual” nucleic acid amplification tests (NAATs) for the detection of chlamydia and gonorrhoea in the context of chlamydia screening in the UK. Additional testing for gonorrhoea, when the real target is chlamydia, does not necessarily confer an additional net benefit. This is because even […]
Why Tanzania seems unlikely to meet UNAIDS targets for HIV/AIDS prevention.
The UNAIDS 90-90-90 Target has set the goal that, by 2020, 90% of the HIV infected should know their status, 90% of those diagnosed should be in treatment, and 90% of those in treatment should achieve viral suppression. The UNAIDS GAP Report (2014) presses the need for countries to achieve a major redeployment of effort […]
Increased HIV infectivity in the acute phase of infection may be a less important factor in HIV transmission than we thought
Assessing, as far as we can, the preventative impact of ART on HIV transmission dynamics is evidently very important – both to inform judgments about ART initiation (Wayal & Hart (STI); Cohen (STI)), and also, at the policy level, to be able to evaluate the possible preventative gains of ART scale-up (Shafer & White (STI); […]
Achieving HPV herd immunity cost-effectively. When does it make sense to allocate resources preferentially to boys?
Recent empirical studies of HPV vaccination have provided evidence that marginal vaccination costs increase with coverage. Let us take into account – they argue – not just the vaccine price, but the cost of education and outreach programmes that would be needed so as to reach the yet unvaccinated population. If we do so, we […]
Can financial incentives help address the problem of HIV lost-to-follow-up in the US?
An article by Skarbinski & Mermin, discussed in my recent blog, Skarbinski & Mermin (STI/blogs), throws into sharp light the problem of the 45.2% of the HIV/AIDS infected population who are diagnosed but lost to follow-up. According to their estimate this group are responsible for 61.3% of transmissions. Various local attempts have been made to […]
Indiana State ban on Needle Share programmes faces challenge of an IDU-fuelled HIV spike
In 2011 18.5% of HIV infections in the US were attributable to intravenous drug-use (IDU) – a significant proportion (Lansky & Wejnert (STIs)). The issue of IDU fuelled HIV transmission has been brought forcibly to the attention of Americans in the last few weeks by the recent HIV outbreak in Scott County, Indiana, US. This […]
Retention in care rather than diagnosis may prove the ultimate challenge for US HIV response
The real challenge which the US HIV/AIDS epidemic poses for the US public health services is not simply to achieve higher levels of diagnosis – but, far more than that, to improve linkage to, and retention in, care. This claim is hardly controversial. But it is thrown into stark relief in a recent study by […]
Reported 86% effectiveness for MSM PrEP by PROUD study makes this intervention a viable option for UK health services
The Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections has recently taken place. At that event the UK PROUD (PRe-exposure Option for reducing HIV in the UK: immediate or Deferred) study of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for MSM reported its results, prior to publication in the coming months. The headline figure is an astonishing 86% for the reduction […]
The varied nature of the US HIV/AIDS epidemic: what makes the South so different?
As of 2011, 38% of all US citizens diagnosed with HIV were from a block of nine states in the south-east, sometimes referred to as “the South”: Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, N. and S. Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Mississippi and Tennessee. Death rates among those living with HIV in this region were, by far, the highest of […]