On International Women`s Day, it is important to look beyond the surface of the AIDS epidemic. It is estimated that out of 34 million people living with HIV worldwide, women represent 49% of all adults living with HIV. That does superficially appear expected, as women make half of the world´s population. But the overall figure hides the tremendous injustice and inequity experienced by women. The burden of HIV is unfortunately not shared as equally as it seems.

In most affected regions, such as Africa and the Caribbean, about 60% of people living with HIV are women. Younger women are even more vulnerable and data suggests that girls 15 to 24 years of age are eight times more likely to be infected with HIV than boys in the same age range. Since the 1990s gender inequalities have been identified as a fundamental driver of HIV and even today in sub-Saharan Africa, women comprised 60% of all new infections. More...

First published on www.huffingtonpost.com on 7 March 2013

Here in Atlanta in anticipation of the annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections , I had been reflecting on how important 2013 could turn out to be in the lead in to the pivotal Millennium Development Goals being met in 2015.I was dwelling on how the effective implementation of science on the ground continues to be one our greatest challenges and at the same time the key to driving down infections through the scale up of such tools as treating as prevention.

I think we all sensed at the AIDS 2012 conference in Washington D.C. a growing sense of optimism that we are at the cusp of beginning to imagine the end of AIDS but at the same time,  as  my colleagues Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Adeeba Kamarulzaman, co-chairs of  the forthcoming IAS 2013 conference, have recently said, the barriers to doing so remain so entrenched in so many parts of the world. More...

By Mats Ahnlund, IAS Advisor

"As a membership based organization, the IAS not only represents members with a wide spectrum of unique experiences in the HIV response, but we also have access to more than 16,000 professionals around the world working in HIV, to network and share experiences and best practices", said Dr. Samuel O Olowookere. We have recently ended the two-day consultation on Efficiency and Effectiveness (E2) in the Nigerian National AIDS Programme, held in its capital Abuja. On the final day panel, led by Elly Katabira, past IAS President, the IAS was represented by a Nigerian member, Dr. Samuael, who stressed the importance of HIV professionals being included in the work with E2 in the Nigerian HIV response on all levels.

Nigeria is a huge country, Africa's most populated and with a large financial potential having substantial oil and gas reserves. Its HIV prevalence is just over 4 %, a level that has been stable for several years. Of course the percentage is not ideal, but it is lower if compared to many other countries. However, despite a relatively small percentage, given the size Nigeria, we are still talking of 3,2 million people living with HIV, or in fact around 10 % of the people living with HIV in the world. More...

By Mats Ahnlund, IAS Advisor

Bill Clinton: - We are only going to support organisations that do things faster and at a lower unit cost.

Bill Gates: - If we push for a new focus on efficiency in both treatment and prevention and we continue [...] to create new tools, we can drive down the number of infections dramatically and start writing the story of the end of AIDS.

What Bill and Bill said in Vienna at AIDS 2010 has greatly influenced us. But the main initiative and drive for the IAS to get involved in working with stakeholders to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of national AIDS programmes, what we now call E2, came from Elly Katabira, our President from 2010 to 2012. More...