My interest in HIV/AIDS started in 2004, when I discovered that both my mother and younger sister were HIV positive. Back then I was working at the District Hospital Bota Lime as a contract worker under the Heavy Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative.

I was the one who carried out the tests, and the sad news pushed me to deepen my knowledge of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Thanks to the scientific advancements and my counseling and guidance, my mother and sister are today using antiretroviral therapy (ART) and are in general good health.

After my training on HIV/AIDS testing and counseling my commitment grew steadily, and I tried to make sure that every single person who came for an HIV test received proper counseling after the response. More...

The International AIDS Society (IAS) congratulates the scientific journal The Lancet for its decision to encourage researchers to enrol more women into clinical trials and to plan to analyse data by sex as a matter of routine, not only when known to be scientifically appropriate.

The step taken by the Lancet follows scientific evidence showing that men and women experience disease and respond to treatment in different ways. A study published recently by the same journal showed that women who smoke have a higher risk of coronary heart disease and lung cancer than male smokers. Also, in many diseases women have more side-effects from treatment than men, due to differences in body surface areas, body mass and amount of adipose tissue. Similar studies show how being female or male can be an important factor of health, illness and response to treatment than what we know now, and The Lancet’s decision to encourage a gender-oriented policy for clinical trials will hopefully help to provide more data on this aspect. More...

From the early days of the HIV epidemic, the unique nature of the International AIDS Conference and its power to mobilize governments, scientists and the international media, while bringing hope and support to people living with HIV, has played a crucial role in shaping the course of HIV and AIDS.

Looking back, the International AIDS Conferences are signposts in the history of the epidemic, showing us not only where we went, but where we should have gone. Since the very first International AIDS Conference in Atlanta in 1985, when the scientists and public health officials grappling with how to respond to the emerging HIV epidemic gathered together to present an overview of knowledge about the disease, the conference has provided the platform needed to effectively respond to the pressing scientific, economic, social and political contexts of the day. More...

The HPTN 052 results were headline news at IAS 2011. Principal Investigator Myron Cohen, MD, talked with the IAS about the years of work that went into the trial, the research team’s emotions upon first learning the results, and the weeks that followed. Dr. Cohen is Associate Vice Chancellor for Global Health and Director of the Institute for Global Health & Infectious Diseases at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

By Scott Sanders

As Myron Cohen and his colleagues finished presenting the results of the HPTN 052 trial to a packed room at IAS 2011, the audience rose to its feet in a standing ovation. It was a rare occurrence at a scientific meeting, reflecting the significance of the results and the tremendous efforts behind them.

The emotions of Cohen and his team members that July afternoon in Rome were a far cry from those they had felt less than three months before. Heading back to the Washington, DC, airport after a regularly scheduled meeting with the study’s Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) on 28 April 2011, the researchers feared the study might be about to come to an end. The research team was completely blinded to the study results data and some of the unusual actions of the DSMB members in the meeting that day had them fearing the worst. More...