HIV News Around The Globe

Africa: USAID's Catalyst Study Expands HIV Prevention Options for Women and Girls in Africa
A USAID-supported study is expanding options for HIV prevention products for women and girls in Africa, a population disproportionately affected by the virus; in sub-Saharan Africa adolescent girls and young women were more than three times as likely to acquire HIV than their male peers in 2022. The study is also generating new evidence on product perspectives and preferences to help increase HIV prevention coverage and reduce new HIV infections.

Through funding from the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), USAID's Catalyzing Access to New Prevention Products to Stop HIV (CATALYST) is a first-of-its-kind study that provides full information on and access to three biomedical HIV prevention methods - daily oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), the dapivirine ring (a monthly vaginal ring also called the PrEP ring), and the newly-introduced injectable cabotegravir for PrEP (CAB PrEP) that is administered every two months. 

Catch up on PrEP updates here and more about this report here .

FHI 360 and partners introduce injectable HIV prevention method as part of research study

The Maximizing Options to Advance Informed Choice for HIV Prevention (MOSAIC) consortium, which is funded by PEPFAR through USAID and led by FHI 360, is introducing long-acting injectable cabotegravir for pre-exposure prophylaxis (CAB for PrEP) alongside oral PrEP and the PrEP ring in five African countries. South Africa and Zimbabwe are the first to welcome CAB for PrEP following regulatory approval and the arrival of donated products on site. 

The rollout is part of Catalyzing Access to New Prevention Products to Stop HIV (CATALYST), a three-year, multi-country implementation study that aims to assess the delivery of multiple PrEP methods to an estimated 11,000 participants without HIV. The study is taking place across 28 public-health service delivery sites supported by PEPFAR in Kenya, Lesotho, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe. As of March 31, nearly 4,000 participants have been enrolled. 

You can read more about this report her

Ugandan scientists start designing new HIV vaccine

Dr Sheila Balinda, one of the leading UVRI scientists in Covid-19 vaccine research, said they are using techniques from Covid-19 vaccine development to come up with an HIV vaccine. “We are still at vaccine discovery and pre-clinical research. We have generated a [vaccine] carrier from our local chimpanzees,” she said.

You can read the updates here

Kericho Based KEMRI Scientists To Lead In HIV Vaccine Discovery

Research scientists at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) and Walter Reed Project (WRP) in Kericho have received a five-year USAID award plan of US Dollars 45.6 million, (Sh. 7 billion) to advance an African led development of HIV vaccine.

Speaking during the launch of the research study at KEMRI Kericho, the Acting Director General Kenya Medical Research Institute KEMRI Prof. Elijah Songok said the research study would lead to the discovery of an HIV vaccine by African scientists for Africa based on the circulating HIV viruses within the continent.

Prof Songok said the consortium titled Bringing Innovation to Clinical and Laboratory Research (BRILLIANT) seeks to end HIV in Africa through New vaccine technology to develop and evaluate HIV vaccine candidates emanating from the African continent.

He said that KEMRI scientists in Kericho would improve and advance the most promising HIV vaccine candidates towards clinical trials. Read more on this here

AIDS 2024 in Munich, Germany Late-breaker Abstract submission is now open

A small number of late-breaker abstracts will be accepted for presentation orally or as posters. The selection will be significantly more rigorous than for regular abstracts.

Late-breaker abstract submissions close on 2 May 2024.

Late-breaker submissions must present data gathered after the regular abstract submission deadline (23 January 2024) that is of unquestioned significance. Data analyzed after the regular submission deadline should not be submitted as late-breaker research if it does not meet a high threshold of scientific merit.

Each presenting author may present only ONE late-breaker abstract at the conference.

You can get more information on how to make your submission here

UNAIDS: How communities led in the HIV response, saving lives in Eswatini at the peak of a crippling AIDS epidemic

Eswatini is one of the countries which has been most affected by HIV. At the peak of the epidemic in 2015, almost one out of three people were living with HIV. In 1995, when there was no antiretroviral treatment for people living with HIV, 73 000 people were living with HIV. 2400 people died of AIDS that year. Worried about the rising number of infections and deaths, communities of people living with HIV mobilized to press that antiretroviral treatment be made available for people living with HIV.

One of the key campaigners for access was Hannie Dlamini. Dlamini is now 50 years old and has been living with HIV for 32 years, after finding out about his HIV positive status at the age of 18. He was one of the first people in Eswatini to publicly declare his positive HIV status in 1995 at a time when the stigma and misinformation around HIV was rife.

You can read more about this update here