At a high-level event on the margin of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York last month, convened with the support of UNAIDS, world leaders agreed that ending the AIDS epidemic as a global threat by 2030 was possible, and should be placed at the centre of health development goals. The brochure, Fast Track […]
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Population-based evidence for the preventative efficacy of quadrivalent HPV in Australia
The HPV vaccination programmes introduced by many countries over the last few years (since 2007) reveal considerable diversity in the coverage they have achieved, the mode of access (i.e. school, public health, private clinics) and responsibility for cost (i.e. publically vv. privately funded) – even in Europe (see ECDC Guidance). In the light of the […]
Missed HPV vaccination opportunities: a consequence of avoiding awkward conversations
In the US, routine administration of quadrivalent HPV vaccine is recommended for girls and boys at 11-12 yrs, with catch-up vaccination recommended up to 26 yrs for girls, and 21 yrs for boys. The difficulty has been in the implementation of the recommendation: overall rates of initiating and completion among US teenage girls currently stand […]
“Catch-up” and incomplete HPV vaccination better than nothing
Quadrivalent HPV vaccine (HPV4) has been shown to protect against HPV types 16 & 18, which cause 70% of cervical cancers, and HPV types 6 & 11, which cause 90% of genital warts. Health authorities in the US and elsewhere have therefore recommended routine vaccination of girls (and more recently boys) at ages 11 & […]
UNAIDS Gap Report: “The beginning of the end of the AIDS epidemic
In advance of the 20th International AIDS Conference in Melbourne 20th-24th July, UNAIDS has published its Report entitled The Gap. This offers a panoramic survey of progress and challenges to date, graphically presented. The general sense of a tide having at last turned in the global battle against HIV is borne out by the Report’s […]
Does risk compensation behaviour neutralize the benefits of voluntary medical male circumcision?
The effectiveness and feasibility of voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) as a preventative intervention against HIV has been demonstrated in a variety of non-circumcising African communities. The WHO has designated 14 countries in southern and eastern Africa as priority areas for VMMC scale-up. Attempts to model the progress of the epidemic have long sought to […]
Should bisexuals be considered a population with specific sexual health needs?
Across many cultural contexts, men who have sex with both men and women (MSMW) have levels of STIs/HIV comparable to those we find in men who have sex only with men (MSM); but MSMW have often proved particularly hard for health services to access. Mercer & Cassell (M&C) (UK) and STIs/Beyrer & Baral (B&B) (South Africa) […]
HIV epidemic among heterosexual non-intravenous drug-users: could HSV-2 co-infection be the driver?
Why such high HIV prevalence reported for non-injecting drug users who are predominantly heterosexual? This reaches 37% in Porto Alegre, Brazil; 43% in China; 13% in Canada; 20% in Florida; 19% in New York City; 24% in Portugal; 29% in Russia? Possible factors include impaired decision making under the influence of drugs or the exchange of sex […]
IDU and HIV in the Middle East: a brief window of opportunity?
There are regions of the world where intravenous drug use (IDU) is known to have a key role in evolving HIV epidemics. Information about IDU populations, on the basis of which to motivate and inform public health interventions, can be scant and of poor quality (STI/Aceijas & Hickman). This deficiency is particularly important to address, […]
Cultural constraints on the uptake of voluntary medical male circumcision in Eastern and Southern Africa
My previous blog spoke of the recent PLoS-Medicine Collection on the progress of a UNAIDS initiative for a five-year scale-up of Voluntary Male Medical Circumcision (VMMC) for HIV prevention in 14 high priority Eastern and Southern African countries. Among the papers, Ashengo & Njeuhmeli (A&N) and Macintyre & Bertrand (M&B) deal with what the authors […]