October 31, 2011
AVAC Fellow, Sylvia Nakasi, recently published a letter, “Uganda must move fast on HIV”, in The New Vision, a leading newspaper in Uganda. Her letter reflected on the recent announcement that Rwanda would consider implementing immediate antiretroviral treatment for all serodiscordant couples on the basis of effective data on treatment as prevention from the HPTN 052 trial. Nakasi called on Uganda to take similar steps, citing modeling data that suggests putting more resources into prevention now decreases how much will be needed to spend for treatment in the future. “As a country we need to move faster and also learn from our neighbors next door and speed up the process from research results to policy.” Given that Uganda sees 350 new HIV infections every day, prevention is a clear priority.