Understanding what causes diseases is a life-and-death matter. It is a complicated issue that has generated a great deal of debate in the medical community.
There is an urgent need to generate robust evidence that shows how the social determinants of health influence people’s abilities to protect themselves against health risks.
Reuters/Mike Hutchings
Seasoned social rights activist Mark Heywood argues that the constitution provides South Africans with more rights and entitlements than they may be aware of.
Thabo Mbeki’s alleged ‘aloofness’ and his antipathy towards debate are inextricably linked with his AIDS denialism.
Reuters
If the vaginal ring becomes available for commercial use it will become one of the tools in the HIV prevention toolbox for women alongside female condoms and daily pre-exposure prophylaxis.
A community health worker walks a couple through an HIV test in Malawi. Mostly men do not access these services.
Baylor College of Medicine Children's Foundation–Malawi / Robbie Flick
After 35 years, AIDS has changed the way the globe thinks about health, culture, and politics.
Treatment has transformed the outlook for people living with HIV from almost certain death to a manageable chronic condition.
Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters
One of the remarkable achievements of South Africa’s Constitutional Court has been its role in improving the quality of the internal democratic processes within the governing ANC.
Zika is an enormous challenge for Pope Francis and the Catholic Church.
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With use of drugs such as ice on the rise, drug consumption rooms are now being set up in Europe to provide supervised inhalation.
The successful prevention of mother to child transmission programmes means nearly all HIV-infected pregnant women should get anti-retroviral treatment to protect their babies.
Joshua Wanyama/Africa Knows
South Africa’s programmes preventing HIV transmission from mothers to children have been hugely successful. But there are still gaps that need to be filled.
A gay subculture revolves around risky, drug-enhanced sex. The reasons why are complex and deserve attention.
Chemsex, Pecadillo Pictures.
Drugs scare us and fascinate us. Societies might fight “wars” against drugs – but we also drink, smoke, ingest and inject an awful lot of them. The Ancient Greeks captured this instability with their concept…
Women would prefer a product that addresses multiple sexual and reproductive health risks at the same time.
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Scientists are developing various products that can provide contraception and protection from sexually transmitted infections and HIV at the same time.
Advances in HIV treatment have turned it into a chronic, but manageable, illness. In this photo: Artist Damien Hirst’s ‘Where there’s a will there’s a way,’ which shows antiretroviral drugs in a medicine cabinet, is seen as it is displayed at a gallery in New York, February 4 2008.
Chip East/Reuters
Thanks to treatment advances, people with HIV can and do live long and full lives. And that has led to a challenge that doctors and patients may not have imagined 35 years ago: the aging HIV patient.
Stigma and intimate partner violence prevent HIV-positive mothers from accessing care and treatment.
Reuters/Darrin Zammit Lupi
For pregnant HIV-positive women taking anti-retrovirals is critical for their babies’ health. Intimate partner violence affects adherence, and must be addressed as part of women’s HIV treatment.
All people have duties to their sexual partners regardless of their HIV status.
miker/Shutterstock
Used properly and consistently, condoms are the most effective, affordable, and low-tech way to prevent HIV. But unfortunately, condoms are not an easy option for everyone – particularly women.
A homeless person sleeps under a post promoting marriage equality.
Cathal McNaughton/Reuters
Professor of medicine and deputy director of the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre at the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine, University of Cape Town
Director, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, The University of Melbourne and Royal Melbourne Hospital and Consultant Physician, Department of Infectious Diseases, Alfred Hospital and Monash University, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity
Associate Professor, Public Health & Social Policy; Special Advisor Health Research, Office of the Vice-President Research and Innovation, University of Victoria