Each year, the AVAC Report frames the most pressing advocacy issues facing the HIV response. At the threshold of 2020, it’s clear that global goals for HIV prevention will miss the mark by a long shot. Now what?
This is a one-pager summarizing AVAC’s priorities for 2020. To download the full Report or see all its graphics, visit report.avac.org.
Each year, the AVAC Report frames the most pressing advocacy issues facing the HIV response. At the threshold of 2020, it’s clear that global goals for HIV prevention will miss the mark by a long shot. Though important progress has been made, the crisis UNAIDS called out in 2016 persists today with new infections around 1.7 million annually, a far cry from the 2020 target of fewer than 500,000. So, we asked ourselves, Now What?, and answered with cross-cutting analysis and an advocacy agenda to match.
For more from the report, including a link to all its graphics, visit report.avac.org. A one-pager of AVAC’s 2020 priorities is also available.
Vaginal insertion and partial efficacy are two challenges that could affect the uptake and continued use of the dapivirine ring. Analyses of the introductions of other products that share similar characteristics provide useful lessons to inform planning for rollout of the dapivirine ring. This paper provides information for planners, implementers, funders, researchers, trainers, providers of technical assistance and others to build an agenda for introducing the dapivirine ring that addresses these two challenges.
WHO released updated guidance on “Hormonal Contraceptive Eligibility for Women at High Risk of HIV”. The WHO updated guidance shifts DMPA, other progestogen-only injectables and IUDs to a MEC 1 classification, which states that the products can be used without restriction. The updated WHO recommendations follow a thorough review of the latest scientific evidence, including the recent results of the ECHO trial, which evaluated whether the risk of HIV differs with the use of three different safe and effective contraceptive methods.
Dramatic reductions in HIV incidence and mortality have been accomplished in very different settings around the world, from Malawi and Thailand to London and San Francisco. While success was achieved in different ways in each location, taken together they demonstrate the gains that can be realized on a global scale.
This publication highlights six locations — Thailand, Malawi, Rakai, New South Wales, London, and San Francisco — that have made impressive progress against the epidemic. Each visual provides an HIV surveillance timeline as well as crucial policy changes—inflection points—that contributed to success.
In 2014, the HIV Vaccines and Microbicides Resource Tracking Working Group and AVAC began a collaboration with the International AIDS Society’s (IAS) Towards an HIV Cure initiative. AVAC, Treatment Action Group (TAG) and the IAS brought together a group to review and allocate grants towards HIV cure research and analyze data on global funding. The working group released a report in July 2019, Global Investment in HIV Cure Research and Development in 2018.
As per findings, US$323.9 million was invested in cure research in 2018, representing a 12 percent increase over the US$288.8 million invested in 2017. Compared to the US$88.1 million invested in 2012, this is a 268 percent increase. The public sector accounted for the majority of funding, with the remaining US$19.7 million invested by philanthropies such as Aidsfonds, amfAR, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, CANFAR, Institut Pasteur, Sidaction and Wellcome Trust.
This annual accounting of funding for biomedical HIV prevention research tracks trends and identifies gaps in investment. The report indicates an uptick after five consecutive years of declining investment. In 2018, funding for HIV prevention R&D increased by a modest 1.2 percent or US$13 million from the previous year, growing to US$1.14 billion. While the increase is encouraging, it’s the smallest net increase since 2003.
Click here for the full archive of past resource tracking reports.
Civil society led by and for women in Africa is working with allies around the world to prepare for the ECHO results and advance a broader agenda of sexual health and rights that centers women and affirms the right to full information and informed choice, as well as integration of HIV and sexual and reproductive health programs. Reports from civil society forum meetings in 2018, as well as key resources, are available here.
A decade ago, UNAIDS and AVAC published the Good Participatory Practice Guidelines for Biomedical HIV Prevention Trials (GPP). Created to provide a consistent global standard for stakeholder engagement across the research life-cycle, GPP has emerged as a point of reference for how to engage stakeholders. It has also given rise to a robust community of practice.
After ten years of implementation, AVAC offers a look back at GPP and a vision for its future — and we explain why GPP’s true potential lies in the hands not just of research groups, but of civil society, trials participants, and an array of stakeholders in the research endeavor.
As 2018 winds down, we’re struck by the many moments, and movements, in the past year that have depended on listening, without bias and also without loss of conviction. In that spirit, our year-end edition of Px Wire offers 10 questions for activists to pose, with curiosity and conviction, in 2019. What answers do you want, what do you hear, what needs to happen next?