COVID-19 restrictions created life-threatening challenges to female sex workers as they weren't able to access their medication, support or their clients.
Women who had a secondary or higher level of education were more likely to test for HIV than women who had no formal education.
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Local and national governments in west and central African countries must prioritise investment in providing access to HIV testing for all pregnant women.
The mortality rate of AIDS-related deaths remains high among adolescent girls and young women.
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The evidence shows that keeping girls in school not only reduces HIV risk, but also delays marriage and pregnancy, and improves mental health.
A South African woman mourning her husband who died of AIDS covers herself, according to custom, during the burial.
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Parents have the primary role of educating their children about their sexuality. But cultural beliefs and taboos about sex can work strongly against their efforts.
The HIV/AIDS response played out over a much longer trajectory than COVID-19. But it is, in some respects, a shining example of what can be achieved when countries and people work together.
People relying on HIV prevention, care and treatment services have become even more vulnerable because of COVID-19.
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If the world is single-minded and focuses purely on combating one pandemic, forgetting others, the effects of other morbidity and mortality on healthcare systems will be seen for a long time to come.
2020 is the international year of the nurse and midwife.
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One of the main challenges remains that diagnostics and drugs for people suffering from advanced HIV aren't readily available. This group of people is vulnerable to deadly opportunistic infections.
Could SARS-CoV-2 evolve to dodge the vaccine?
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As viruses are transmitted from person to person they are constantly mutating and replicating. Could the SARS-CoV-2 virus evolve to evade the new vaccines that have just been developed?
Long-acting cabotegravir injections once every eight weeks was better than the daily tablet used for HIV prevention.
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To better anticipate and manage the emergence of new pandemics, a paradigm shift is needed to take into account the complex interactions between human health, animal health, the environment and the economy.
Ccommunication tended to be one-sided and used fear.
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Beatrice Maina, African Population and Health Research Center; Boniface Ushie, African Population and Health Research Center, and Caroline Kabiru, African Population and Health Research Center
Equipping parents with the right information on what to talk about, and how to talk about it, is a key step in addressing challenges to sexual health.
The COVID-19 new normal might be here for quite some time.
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As ready as you are to be done with COVID-19, it's not going anywhere soon. A historian of disease describes how once a pathogen emerges, it's usually here to stay.
Many factors influence how consistently women take their HIV medicine.
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Some insights into previous outbreaks of human coronaviruses may be useful in explaining the comparatively 'low' numbers of COVID-19 infections and mortality in people with HIV in South Africa.
Malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS are regarded as the 'big three' infectious diseases. This is where scientists are at in their efforts to find a vaccine for each one.
Adolescents need to be part of prevention interventions.
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Underlying social and structural causes of behaviour - such as poverty and gender disparities - are often ignored. But these are potential drivers of HIV infection among young people.
A woman carries a bucket of fresh water to an informal settlement in Khayelitsha,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
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