Two decades since Doctors without Borders (MSF) started its HIV programme in Khayelitsha, the organisation will start wrapping up its operations. Siyabonga Kamnqa spoke to some people living with HIV who benefitted from this programme and who now work as activists about developments over the last 20 years.
While progress in the race for effective COVID-19 vaccines has been rapid and impressive, an effective HIV vaccine remains elusive. As part of Spotlight’s World AIDS Day 2020 coverage, Kathryn Cleary asks two of South Africa’s top vaccine researchers to update us on where we are in the race for an HIV vaccine.
The U=U campaign is based on a simple message – an undetectable viral load in people living with HIV equals an untransmissible virus. The U=U campaign, argues Mandisa Dukashe, has the power to motivate people living with HIV to adhere to ARVs, achieve viral suppression, and subsequently lead long and healthy lives while preventing HIV transmission to sexual partners and their babies.
Early results from a pivotal trial of an HIV prevention injection announced by the University of the Witwatersrand researchers have been hailed as being a “game-changer” to turn “the tide on HIV” as it effectively reduces HIV acquisition and provides women more choices in how to protect themselves. Amy Green reports.
A recent announcement about a vaginal ring to prevent HIV has AIDS activists and women’s sexual and reproductive health advocates excited. But where would this ring fit in South Africa’s HIV prevention programme? Amy Green investigates.
The Department of Health aims to make a pill to prevent HIV infection available at all community health centres and primary healthcare clinics in South Africa by end September this year.
1 October is set to become a memorable day in some higher-education institutions. It marks the day in 2017 that Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) was first rolled out at select campus health clinics as a new, highly effective HIV-prevention method.
Thuthukile Mbatha is a researcher at SECTION27, and an advocacy fellow for the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition (AVAC). She runs an advocacy project that calls for access to Pre-Exposure Prophlylaxis (PrEP) for young women in higher education institutions.
As the South African National AIDS Council (SANAC) nears completion of the next National Strategic Plan (NSP) on HIV, TB, and STIs (2017-2022), lofty ambitions for positive outcomes are in place. However, what provinces and districts are expected to measure in order to track implementation and incremental steps toward these goals is—at this point—completely absent from the NSP.
