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...

On Universal Children’s Day the IAS would like to highlight the importance of this date. On 20 November 1959, the United Nations adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child and 30 years later, the Convention on the Rights of the Child . These documents have revolutionised the way children are treated throughout the world and improved countless children’s lives. Yet there is much work still to be done; article 24 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child outlines the following, “States Parties recognize the right of the child to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health and to facilities for the treatment of illness and rehabilitation of health”. According to the World Health Organization, at the end of 2011 there were around 3.4 million children living with HIV. These children are definitely not enjoying the highest attainable standard of health. One of the many ways in which their health could be improved is through further research into paediatric HIV and AIDS research. More...

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...