Biology

This is the 2nd Edition of the Treatment Action Group and Stop TB Partnership’s 2011 report on funding trends for tuberculosis (TB) research and development (R&D) from the baseline year 2005 through 2010, the last year for which full data is available. Updates to this report include new funding figures from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria, and Company Y; as well as revised data from Pfizer and the European Commission. In total, these donors reported an additional $13.4 million in TB R&D funding for 2010.

HIV/AIDS imposes enormous economic, social, health, and human costs and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. The challenge is particularly acute in Sub-Saharan Africa, home to two-thirds (22.5 million) of the people living with HIV/AIDS globally, and where HIV/AIDS has become the leading cause of premature death. But now, after decades of misery and frustration with the disease, there are signs of hope. HIV prevalence rates in Africa are stabilizing. This book sheds light on these concerns by analyzing the fiscal implications of HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa, the epicenter of the epidemic. It uses the toolbox of public finance to assess the sustainability of HIV/AIDS programs.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is not a recent phenomenon, but it is a critical health issue today. Over several decades, to varying degrees, bacteria causing common infections have developed resistance to each new antibiotic, and AMR has evolved to become a worldwide health threat. With a dearth of new antibiotics coming to market, the need for action to avert a developing global crisis in health care is increasingly urgent.

These policy guidelines on collaborative TB/HIV activities are a compilation of existing WHO recommendations on HIV-related TB. They follow the same framework as the 2004 interim policy document, structuring the activities under three distinct objectives: establishing and strengthening mechanisms for integrated delivery of TB and HIV services; reducing the burden of TB among people living with HIV and initiating early antiretroviral therapy; and reducing the burden of HIV among people with presumptive TB (that is, people with signs and symptoms of TB or with suspected TB) and diagnosed TB.

Contents of Newsletter

Welcome to the 95th issue of HIV This Week ! In this issue, we cover the following topics:

1. Young people
• Sexual risk for HIV in South Africa and the USA: it is not at all what you think

Over the course of 2011, the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria experienced unprecedented adversity. Media accounts and internal reports drew attention to instances of corruption involving grantees: $34 million of probable fraud in four African countries triggered a suspension of assistance by Germany and two other European donors. External reviews detailed the Fund’s deficient managerial practices, weak oversight of investments, and ineffectual board governance. An alarming, $2-billion-plus financial shortfall, revealed suddenly at year’s end, reflected a worsening global economy, overly optimistic forecasting by the Fund secretariat, and flagging donor trust and confidence in the Fund itself.

Principal investigator: Dr EE Lutge (Health Systems Trust)

In collaboration with Professor JA Volmink (University of Stellenbosch) and Dr SA Lewin (Medical Research Council South Africa)

Additional technical assistance for protocol development and data analysis provided by KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation.

Funded by the National Department of Health (South Africa), the Tuberculosis Control

Assistance Program (TB CAP), (the Netherlands, through the National TB Directorate) and the Wellcome Trust (United Kingdom).

"Mercy" is a short film created by Unicef and Mac Aids Fund that overviews the Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) of HIV services in rural South Africa. The viewer is taken through the experience of a young women who visits a clinic for a pregnancy test and finds out she is HIV+.

This report was prepared by the UNAIDS Advisory Group on HIV and Sex Work to complement the UNAIDS Guidance Note on HIV and Sex Work (2009). The Advisory Group includes representatives of organisations affiliated with the Global Network of Sex Work Projects, independent experts from academia and civil society organisations, representatives of UNAIDS Co-Sponsors and the Secretariat. The Advisory Group was constituted in 2009 by the Executive Director of UNAIDS to provide advice and guidance to UNAIDS on matters related to HIV and sex work, while paying particular attention to the human rights of female, male, and transgender sex workers and the goal of universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support for sex workers.