Thursday, 25 February 2021, 4:19 pm
The
promise was that by 2020, no child will be born with HIV or
newly infected with HIV during breastfeeding across the
world. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic posed an
unprecedented challenge to health systems, the progress
towards the HIV-related 2020 goalpost, despite some
commendable gains, was not very encouraging.
Despite
global efforts to prevent HIV transmission, 150,000 children
were either born with or were newly infected with HIV during
breastfeeding in 2019, bringing the total number of children
(aged 0 to 9 years) living with HIV to 1.1 million. Also,
about 310
children died from AIDS-related causes every day in
2019, mostly because of inadequate access to HIV prevention,
Monday, 8 February 2021, 4:45 pm
HIV
science has advanced but policies and programmes have been
slow to respond towards ending AIDS, said Mitchell Warren,
co-chair of the global conference on HIV Research for
Prevention (HIVR4P) and Executive Director of AVAC (Global
Advocacy for HIV Prevention).
Scientific advances have
seen huge gains on HIV prevention and treatment fronts.
Sadly, what has not changed is the lack of equity in the
response. Those who are the most marginalized, most
stigmatised and most criminalized continue to remain so. No
wonder, the number of new HIV infections has almost
plateaued at 1.7 million per year, he said.
Having Wide Range of Options to Prevent HIV is Vital by Angela Mohan on February 3, 2021 at 3:32 PM
Various promising preventive options for HIV are available, which might prove to be more acceptable and user friendly to people from diverse communities.
Long-acting dapivirine vaginal ring that has finally seen the light of the day and is under regulatory approval processes of several countries. This long-acting female-oriented HIV prevention option is designed to be used by women discreetly. This silicon ring protects from acquiring HIV for 28 days at a time. The ring has to be replaced once every month.
Other promising products include long-acting injectable pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for women and Islatravir as a once-monthly PrEP pill, as well as a promising new method to induce broadly neutralising antibodies (bNAbs) that could help speed HIV vaccine development.
The message from all scientists is very loud and clear that vaccines alone will not be able to stem the tide of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even after getting vaccinated, we will have to continue to wear masks, maintain physical distancing, wash hands .