July 15, 2015
The latest issue of Px Wire, AVAC’s quarterly newsletter on HIV prevention research and implementation, is now available.
Click here to download the new issue.
In this issue we look back at the historic International AIDS Conference that took place in Durban, South Africa, in 2000, how far we’ve come in the response today—and how much further we still need to go.
When the AIDS community gathered in July 2000, the world was still four years away from anything resembling global antiretroviral therapy (ART), but through the activism seen at that conference, the agreement that ART was a human right started then and there. There has since been remarkable scale-up and innovation in the use of ARVs as both treatment and prevention.
This issue of Px Wire describes the calls to expand ART access to all who need it, which have been amplified over the two months since the results of the START trial, which found that initiation of ART in people living with HIV significantly reduced serious clinical events and deaths as compared to people who initiated ART based on the guidelines in their countries.
We also document a growing demand for PrEP, including a robust and spontaneous show of support for expanded daily oral PrEP access for all those at risk by participants at the recent South African AIDS Conference, and the need for updated guidance from the WHO and targets from UNAIDS.
In our centerspread, we again look backwards and forward, at the conferences that took place in Vancouver and Durban in 1996 and 2000 and will again this year and the next.
And we look at the increasing role civil society is playing at developing PEPFAR Country Operating Plans (COPs) which guide targets, geography, interventions and budget levels on an annual basis.