The uptake and continuation of tuberculosis preventive therapy were much higher when it was provided through a community-based model compared to the standard clinic-based model, a study conducted in KwaZulu-Natal found. Elri Voigt unpacks the study findings, which were recently presented at the Conference for Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Seattle, USA.
A study published last year on an HIV variant that has been circulating in the Netherlands for the last 20 years reminded the public of the existence of viral variants beyond SARS-CoV-2. Elri Voigt unpacks what we know about the HI-virus, its variants, and the study’s findings.
On December 12, Ntimbwe Munongo Mpamba will celebrate his fortieth birthday with chocolate cake in Northgate, Johannesburg. He was born with HIV but only became aware of his HIV status many years later. Biénne Huisman spoke to him about living with HIV, his early years when his mother fed him medicine disguised as sweets, and now, living openly as an HIV awareness champion.
In 2015, the World Health Organization recommended a urine test that helps with the detection of tuberculosis (TB) in people living with HIV who are hospitalised or who have compromised immune systems. While uptake of this test in South Africa was initially quite slow, numbers presented at the recent South African TB Conference suggest that the use of the test is now increasing. Tiyese Jeranji reports.
Elri Voigt summarises some of the latest developments on long-acting therapies for HIV presented at the 2022 International AIDS conference.
In 2021, HIV was successfully suppressed in the bodies of around 63% of the close to eight million people living with HIV in South Africa. This is according to recent outputs from Thembisa, the leading mathematical model of HIV in South Africa. With the help of some graphs, Spotlight editor Marcus Low unpacks this and other key model outputs.
Cryptococcal meningitis is the second biggest killer of people living with HIV after tuberculosis (TB). Now, a global initiative, the Ending Cryptococcal Meningitis Deaths by 2030 Strategic Framework aims to get the gold standard drug to treat cryptococcal meningitis – flucytosine – registered in countries that need it. Amy Green reports.
A study recently published in The Lancet found that women living with HIV made up an astonishing 63.4% of new cervical cancer cases in South Africa in 2018. Elri Voigt spoke to local experts about the links between HIV and cervical cancer in South Africa and how cervical cancer is prevented, tested for, and treated in the public sector.
By Sharonann Lynch – Viral load testing measures the amount of HIV virus (HIV RNA) in a person’s blood. It is the optimal method for identifying antiretroviral therapy (ART) treatment failure (defined as an HIV viral load greater than 1000 copies/mL), because it is more sensitive and has a higher positive predictive value than CD4 cell count and other clinical indicators.
