HIV prevention

Thanks to Karen Hardee of Population Action International (PAI), who presented today on the "Getting Our Voices Heard: Shaping Public Policy" panel, I now know that the ABCs (Abstinence, Be Faithful, use Condoms) of HIV prevention were not originally a half-brained concoction of the Bush administration. However, her presentation also prompted thoughts about the limitations of public health approaches.

As it turns out, the ABCs can be traced to a few different sources, including a mid-80s STD prevention program from Ohio, a Tanzanian HIV-prevention campaign from the early 90s, and basic public health and epidemiologic building blocks. At the root of the ABCs are three simple ideas:
- Avoid exposure
- Reduce exposure
- Block exposure

And the Tanzanian campaign, run by a Catholic priest, interpreted these messages into the "AIDS is a flood" campaign. Each HIV-prevention method was represented by a lifeboat with one boat for abstinence, one boat for monogamy with an uninfected partner, and one boat for consistent condom use. The campaign was also clear that each individual was free to choose what lifeboat was right for them and could switch boats at any point as their life circumstances changed.
 read more »

Though times are starting to change, machismo still reins in Mexico as firmly as the tortilla staple diet and devotion to la Virgen de Guadalupe.

Threaded into the national identity of modern Mexico is a strong tradition of sexism, homophobia, and adherence to strict gender roles.

This is the country after all that embraces its bravado breakfast of "huevos rancheros" and its male-dominated cowboy traditions.

Whether and how this predominantly Catholic country of 109 million people moves past such institutional and cultural biases promises important lessons for the rest of Latin America and, indeed, the world.

Slowly, progress is being made. Speaking at the International AIDS Conference's opening plenary, President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa mentioned the word homofobia for the first time. The national government sponsored a groundbreaking campaign to mitigate homophobia in targeted neighborhoods of Mexico City. And a longstanding legal prohibition against a woman's right to choose was recently, and narrowly, repealed in Mexico City, though anti-choice laws prevail in most regions of the country.
 read more »

Unprotected anal intercourse is 5 to 80 times more efficient at transmitting HIV compared to unprotected vaginal intercourse.

Men and women must demand safe, effective and acceptable rectal microbicides. Anal intercourse is a HUMAN behavior, and globally. most of it is unprotected. It is quite likely that the "heterosexual epidemic" is in fact in no small part driven by unprotected anal intercourse.

It is time we push funding institutions as well as microbicide researchers to invest more resources into the research and development of rectal microbicides to protect ALL OF US.

Check out the following new posts featured on the ONLY blog in the WWW devoted to rectal microbicides.

IAC - Jury Out on Heterosexual Risk

SIV Rectal Transmission Prevented by Tenofivir Gel