HIV Vaccine and Antibody Efficacy Trials to Date

This infographic provides a comprehensive overview of HIV vaccine and antibody efficacy trials. Over 20 years and 12 trials, only two positive signals have been observed.

Joint Statement on the April 18th Revised Pandemic Accord Draft

The Coalition of Advocates for Global Health and Pandemic Preparedness, a group of organizations advocating for a holistic and equitable approach in pandemic preparedness, offers several revisions to the April 18 revised Pandemic Accord draft.

Read the statement.

PxPulse: The Advocacy Chronicles with APHA’s Yvette Raphael 

Our debut episode of the Advocacy Chronicles features Yvette Raphael, the Executive Director of Advocacy for Prevention of HIV and AIDS (APHA) in South Africa, and a leader in the development of The Choice Manifesto, supported from start to finish by CASPR.

As co-chair of the African Women Prevention Community Accountability Board (AWPCAB), Yvette and other board members launched the manifesto in Kampala, in September 2023, calling for choice in HIV prevention options for women — such as oral and injectable cabotegravir for PrEP, the dapivirine vaginal ring and the Dual Prevention Pill — and a commitment to expanding access to them. A call heard by UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima, who was on hand at the launch to endorse the manifesto.  

Yvette, who is also a 2014 AVAC Advocacy Fellow and celebrated as one of South Africa’s leading human rights activists, lays out why The Choice Manifesto matters and how advocates are leveraging it. 

Resources

The More We Know

Evolving our understanding of PrEP for cisgender women

Science and real-world experience continue to demand a re-assessment of our collective understanding of the safety and effectiveness of PrEP options for women, including oral, vaginal ring, and injectable options. For instance, a new paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association by Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo (HIV Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis with Emtricitabine and Tenofovir Disoproxil Fumarate Among Cisgender Women) challenges the notion, baked into policies, programs and “conventional wisdom”, that cisgender women need to be “super-adherers” to achieve protection utilizing oral PrEP. In this webinar, we discussed this important paper and more.

Speakers:
• Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
• Joyce Ng’ang’a, WACI Health

Moderator:
Raniyah Copeland, Equity & Impact Solutions

Materials:
Recording / Ukrainian Audio / Slides / Resources / Audio Transcript (English/Ukrainian)

Announcing the 2024/25 AVAC Advocacy Fellows

We are pleased to announce our 13th class of the flagship AVAC Advocacy Fellows Program for 2024-2025! This group of seven advocates will participate in an 18-month program that supports their advocacy efforts, invests in the further development of their skills, shapes the agenda for HIV prevention research, and influences how quickly new interventions move into policy and programs in their communities and countries.

AVAC Response to Uganda’s Constitutional Court Ruling on the Anti-Homosexuality Act

AVAC is gravely concerned with the Constitutional Court of Uganda’s recent decision to uphold the core provisions of the Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2023 (AHA) that was signed into law nearly one year ago. AVAC stands in solidarity with the LGBTQIA+ community in Uganda, and globally, in calling out this dangerous law.

AVAC Responds to the Pandemic Accord Negotiations

AVAC’s Sam Rick responds to the latest in Pandemic Accord negotiations—member states have engaged in text-based negotiations throughout the end of March. She offered the following position on the state of negotiations as of March 28, 2024 to Politico Pro.

“The draft puts us in serious jeopardy: We are so close to having a sorely needed agreement on how countries will operate in the wake of the next pandemic, yet Global North countries are risking this all to satisfy the interests of pharmaceutical companies. There are places in the draft where it seems countries are finally coming to some baseline consensus, but the textual edits made by Member States this week in the Article on Pathogen Access and Benefits, which is the lynchpin of the entire agreement, show that we are very far from reaching consensus. Without a shift in the US delegation’s position, we’ll have no agreement at all. The US seems to have taken a knife to the text, rendering it toothless. It seems that if the US has its way in this Article, there will be no system to compel benefits sharing, which is the whole point of the Article. The US delegation must compromise and permit an opt-in.”

The Coalition of Advocates for Global Health and Pandemic Preparedness, a group of organizations advocating for an integrated and holistic approach to preparedness that emphasizes equity, inclusion, and synergies of multiple global health programs in advancing preparedness, published their considerations and asks in these negotiations.

Our Partnership Network

Capability Statement

AVAC’s greatest strengths lie in its ability to convene diverse stakeholders in the fight against HIV and its dedication to bolstering civil society coalitions for effective advocacy.

STIWatch Newsletter, March 2024

The first quarter of 2024 ends with new research and questions on the future directions of STI vaccines and diagnostics. The Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) was the setting for positive news on the potential for early use of doxycycline to prevent STIs (DoxyPEP) in real-world settings and questions about its effectiveness in cisgender women given major evidence gaps. Important discussions and debates continued around the issue of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), as the field continues to grapple with the rollout of DoxyPEP. Presentations at CROI also highlighted the need for new diagnostics for syphilis as infections continue to increase globally and the need for STI advocacy efforts to ensure these infections get the attention and funding needed to develop vaccines and diagnostics that can prevent, detect, and treat these infections!    

In January, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released the STI surveillance data from 2022, which showed an increase in chlamydia and syphilis cases from 2021. Gonorrhea cases decreased between 2021 and 2022 by 9%. Alarmingly, 2022 congenital syphilis cases increased by 30% from 2021, signaling an urgent need for novel prevention, treatment, and testing methods.  

In Australia, a group of researchers published a response to the Australasian Society for HIV, Viral Hepatitis and Sexual Health Medicine’s October 2023 statement on the use of DoxyPEP in Australia. The authors point to the potential threat of increasing AMR and the urgent need to implement measures to monitor DoxyPEP use and its impact.  

Read on for upcoming webinars, must-read resources supporting advocacy for improved funding and commitments for STI vaccines and diagnostics. Afterwards, test your knowledge with AVAC’s new STI Trivia quiz.  

New Report! STIs: A Review of the 2022 Vaccine and Diagnostic R&D Pipeline and Investments 

STI Vaccine and Diagnostic R&D Funding by Pathogen

A new AVAC report tracks funding trends in vaccine and diagnostics R&D, and pipeline investments for some of the most common STIs, including chlamydia, genital herpes, gonorrhea, hepatitis B, human papillomavirus (HPV), syphilis, and trichomoniasis. The report finds that STI research remains underfunded and neglected compared to other infectious diseases. Read the report to learn more.

STI Advocacy Updates

AVAC spoke with two cervical cancer advocates, Tamika Felder and Karen Nakawala, in January as part of its cervical cancer webinar series. Felder and Nakawala are breaking taboos and saving lives by empowering people to share their stories of survivorship and senseless loss. 

Felder, founder of Cervivor, Inc., was diagnosed with cervical cancer at 25, and turned her struggle into a mission, providing resources and a platform for those affected by the disease. Her impactful work and advocacy inspired Nakawala to found the Teal Sisters Foundation in 2020, following her successful treatment for cervical cancer. To learn more about Tamika and Karen, watch AVACs cervical cancer webinar. Thank you, Tamika and Karen for all that you do!  

January 18 marked HPV Awareness Day. AVAC and TogetHER for Health released an updated call to action to improve HPV vaccination among people living with HIV. In total, 31 organizations signed on to this call, urging global leadership to increase access to lifesaving HPV vaccines for people living with HIV.

Upcoming Events

STI Awareness Week is April 14 – 20!

Join us for two webinars focused on syphilis and DoxyPEP. These webinars are intended for health care providers, civil society organizations, public health officials, and others working in the STI/HIV fields. 

September 2024 STI Conferences

REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN FOR TWO IMPORTANT STI CONFERENCES IN SEPTEMBER – WHICH UNFORTUNATELY ARE RUNNING CONCURRENTLY IN DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE WORLD!

The  2024 STI Prevention Conference will bring 1,200 conference attendees to Atlanta, Georgia, from September 16-19, 2024. Abstracts are being accepted until March 29. 

The  25th IUSTI World Congress  will take place September 17-20, 2024, in Sydney, Australia, and provide an opportunity to meet, discuss and learn about the latest research and innovation in sexual and reproductive health.  

What We’re Reading and Resources

  • Testing, testing: the advancing diagnostics for sexually transmitted infections. Diagnostics are urgently needed to detect STIs and this article examines several that are on the horizon. A US-Based company, Qvin is developing the Q-pad, a diagnostic menstrual pad with a removable strip to identify signs of diabetes and symptoms of high-risk human papillomavirus. Daye, a UK based gynecological start-up, launched a diagnostic product that is a tampon with the ability to screen for STIs. These advancements are exciting and serve as a reminder that advocacy is needed to ensure these products get to the people who need them. 
  • CARB-X Funds Visyby Medical to Develop a portable rapid diagnostic for Gonorrhea Including Antibiotic Susceptibility Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARB-X) will award up to US$1.8 million to biotechnology company, Visby Medical, to develop a portable rapid polymerase chain reaction (PCR) diagnostic to detect gonorrhea and its susceptibility to ciprofloxacin, a former frontline oral antibiotic that can no longer treat gonorrhea infections resistant to this medication. Funding will also support development of a test for gonorrhea, chlamydia, and trichomoniasis in men based on urine samples.
  • Syphilis Complicating Pregnancy and Congenital Syphilis. This manuscript provides a review of syphilis during pregnancy and congenital syphilis. As syphilis and congenital syphilis infections continue to rise, novel approaches are needed to detect, prevent, and treat infections. Because syphilis disproportionately affects populations with limited access to healthcare, new and improved diagnostics and therapeutics will need to be embedded within a health framework that prioritizes equity to improve the diagnosis and treatment of congenital syphilis, a preventable disease.  
  • Near-to-patient-testing to inform targeted antibiotic use for sexually transmitted infections in a public sexual health clinic: the NEPTUNE cohort study. This study examines the effectiveness of a novel lateral flow assay for point-of-care detection of gonorrhea among people with symptoms. Lateral flow assays are tests that can detect the presence of proteins or antigens for specific infections, like COVID-19 and HIV. This test had excellent clinical sensitivity and specificity in detecting gonorrhea among male and female patients with symptoms. A test like this could provide an important tool to better detect infections in settings without direct access to laboratory testing and reduce overtreatment.
  • Breaking Barriers in STI Clinical Management: Addressing Resistance Challenges and Incorporating New Diagnostic Approaches. This on-demand webinar features Dr. Van Der Pol and Dr. William Geisler who share their insights on crucial aspects of STI clinical management, focusing on resistance challenges and new diagnostic approaches. 

To learn more about AVAC’s STI Program, visit STIWatch.org and avac.org/sti. Email sti@avac.org for questions or additional information. And to sign up for specific updates on STIs, click here.

Developments in the HIV Biomedical Prevention Pipeline & PrEP Implementation Issues

An Update for Community Educators and Advocates

The European AIDS Treatment Group published a report covering two online discussions on the HIV biomedical prevention research & PrEP implementation issues for community educators and advocates. The report covers developments from the PREVENIR Cohort study, on long-Acting intramuscular PrEP, DoxyPEP, vaccine, as well as STI-PEP research. It also reviews challenges in the uptake of PrEP among women and in particular migrant women from sub-Saharan Africa and trans people.

Download the report. For more information and to see the recordings of the online discussions, click here.