Vaginal ring helps protect women against HIV infection: Two large studies

Kakaire A Kirunda, CNS Correspondent, Uganda
Two large clinical trials - The Ring Study and ASPIRE - conducted in four African countries have shown that a monthly vaginal ring containing the antiretroviral drug (ARV) dapivirine can safely help prevent HIV infection in women. In tele-media brief to select African journalists prior to last  night’s official release of the findings at the annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Boston-Massachusetts, lead scientists said the dapivirine ring safely reduced HIV infection overall by 30 percent compared to those who used a placebo (dummy) ring among the 4588 volunteers who participated.

Another Trial to Help Women Control HIV Infection Ends In Setback

BREAKING NEWS
Efforts to get women controlled HIV prevention tools have once again suffered a setback following the release of final results from a 4 year study that that sought to determine the safety and effectiveness of two antiretroviral (ARV)-based HIV prevention approaches in women. Speaking to a select team of journalists in the trial countries of Uganda, Zimbabwe and South Africa via teleconference on Monday afternoon, the lead researchers announced that none of the three products - tenofovir gel, oral tenofovir and oral Truvada proved to be effective among the women enrolled in the VOICE study.

ANALYSIS: Can Uganda achieve zero new HIV infections and AIDS deaths by 2015?

"Getting to zero:  Zero new HIV infections. Zero discrimination. Zero AIDS related deaths," is the theme for World AIDS Days between 2011 and 2015, in line with a new global vision being spearheaded by UNAIDS. Whether all countries, regardless of the size of their epidemic and level of development, will achieve this target is another issue all together. However, countries around the world are trying to work out ways of achieving the UNAIDS vision.

Lung health: Cough is not normal

Lung Week: 12-17 November
 As the world marks the Lung Week, Citizen News Service - CNS' Kakaire Ayub Kirunda speaks to the president of the Uganda Thoracic Society Dr Martin Okot-Nwang who recently retired after several years of service at the country’s national referral hospital in Kampala. Dr Okot – Nwang speaks about the state of lung health in Uganda and resource limited settings.

Uganda in plan to vaccinate 3 million children against pneumonia

World Pneumonia Day, 12th November
Lung Week: 12-17 November
Ms Mary Musoke of Kampala in Uganda is expecting to have her third born child in late March or early April 2013, making the delivery timely for the newborn to get its Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine (PCV), which debuts in the Uganda public health system for free. Due to the high disease rates of the killer invasive pneumococcal disease (pneumonia, septicaemia and meningitis), a major cause of illness and death, now Government is set to introduce PCV as part of the routine immunization schedule.

An HIV vaccine will never work in isolation

In the event that control and elimination of HIV is realised in the next few years, maintaining this success is going to be hard without a vaccine. That is how the Director of the US’ National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Disease Dr Anthony Fauci analysed the situation at the AIDS Vaccine 2012 conference which ended Wednesday (Sept.12) in the American city of Boston. “If you want to have [HIV] control and maintenance of control, elimination and maintenance of elimination, in my mind the science and behaviour will tell me that it will virtually impossible to get to the point of true control and elimination without a vaccine,” said Dr Fauci in a keynote lecture.