New guidelines from the World Health Organization mean more people are eligible for antiretrorviral therapy. It’s critical to find ways for people to start treatment without multiple clinic visits.
Campaigns like the Lagos AIDS Walk have created awareness of HIV in Nigeria’s capital, but they are lacking in rural areas, where stigmatisation is rife.
Reuters/Akintunde Akinleye
In South Africa, female sex workers go for HIV tests, receive counselling and use condoms – but don’t access antiretroviral treatments. More options are now available and can change this.
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
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
In sub-Saharan Africa more women may be infected with HIV than men - but men are more likely to die because of poor testing and treatment regimes.
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.
Anglo American’s plans to reduce its operations will have an impact on the provision of health services to miners.
Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko
The closure of several mines in South Africa and production cuts could have a detrimental impact on the health of miners who rely on in-house HIV and TB treatment programmes.
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.
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.
South Africa’s successes in HIV treatment have been marred by challenges in improving HIV prevention methods.
Reuters/Nacho Doce
With nearly one-fifth of the globe’s HIV positive population, South Africa has the largest anti-retroviral program in the world. But HIV prevention still presents a big challenge for the country.
All people have duties to their sexual partners regardless of their HIV status.
miker/Shutterstock
Sasha Petrova, The Conversation and Nicola McCaskill, The Conversation
Researchers have found a promising way of kicking the AIDS virus out of its hiding place in infected cells, potentially removing the main obstacle to curing HIV.
Sexual contact between men remains the main route of HIV transmission.
Aristocrats-hat/Flickr
Despite health promotion campaigns and a concerted effort to make antiretroviral therapy more accessible, the number of new HIV cases in Australia has remained stable over the last three years.
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