Sunday, February 7, 2021, is the annual observance of National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day (NBHAAD). The Strategic Leadership Council is the community group that sets the direction for NBHAAD. This year’s observance comes at a time of renewed concern and action for health equity and inclusion across the nation.

We’ve put together a list of resources from HIV.gov and our federal partners to help you get involved with NBHAAD and spread the word.

Where to Go

Our NBHAAD Awareness Day page has resources such as the NBHAAD logo, fact sheets, and other materials from the community and across the U.S. Government. We feature the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) NBHAAD digital toolkit and their Let’s Stop HIV Together campaign resources that you can use and share. We’ll also add registration details for some upcoming webinars hosted by the HHS Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy (OIDP) and CDC that anyone can join.

We encourage you to stay tuned for the Strategic Leadership Council’s communications about this year’s observance. And be sure not to miss the Ending the HIV Epidemic: A Plan for America (EHE) initiative quarterly stakeholder webinar on January 27, which will provide updates on major federal activities related to EHE implementation and highlight ways to improve HIV diagnosis, care and prevention outcomes for Black women. Register here  to join.

What to Know

Given the disproportionate impact of HIV on Black communities, we encourage you to learn what’s happening with EHE implementation. This data-driven, locally-implemented effort continues its important work to reduce new HIV infections even as our nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic proceeds.

PrEP is an important HIV prevention tool and the Ready Set PrEP program may be right for you or eligible individuals with whom you work. Please share information about the HIV Services Locator, where individuals can find PrEP providers in their local area.

HIV self-testing is a key strategy to improve testing uptake and increase diagnoses, particularly in these times when face-to-face testing services have been disrupted. Find information about self-testing on HIV.gov. Please use and share the Locator to find testing services nearby. (Be sure to call ahead to inquire about the availability of self-testing.)

HIV treatment helps people with HIV stay healthy and live longer. There is also a major prevention benefit: people with HIV who take HIV medicine daily as prescribed and get and keep an undetectable viral load have effectively no risk of sexually transmitting HIV to an HIV-negative partner. Please share information about the importance of getting and staying on HIV treatment.

For more information, we provide basic HIV facts about HIV prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. Know the facts and spread the word (along with your encouragement and support) with friends and family members who have not been tested for HIV, might be at risk, or are living with HIV.

How to Share

The hashtag for NBHAAD 2021 is #NBHAAD. Let your voice be heard by using the hashtag on your social media.

The following channels are part of the conversation, give them a follow, like or share:

• Facebook: HIVgov , CDC HIV , and Start Talking Stop HIV 
• Twitter: @HIVGov , @CDC_HIV/AIDS , @DrMerminCDC 
• Instagram: @HIVgov , @stophivtogether , @starttalkinghiv 

Find Out More

We’ll be posting content on our blog and on our social media channels throughout NBHAAD. Want to make sure you don’t miss out on the latest HIV resources, policies, and programs? Sign up to receive email updates.

The post How to Share the News about National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day appeared first on MyMedicPlus.

According to data provided to Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, the year 2020 saw nearly 80 per cent drop in people tested. groups.

Several routine health activities have taken a backseat due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and one among the worst hit was HIV-AIDS surveillance activities that saw a nearly 50 per cent reduction, as per the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC).

Apart from the diversion of manpower, a major factor behind the drop was due to the fact that sex workers were largely out of work, migrants were away and truckers were dormant during the lockdown, making it difficult for NGOs and AMC to conduct targeted interventions for these groups.

Deputy health officer at AMC and project director at AMC AIDS Society, Mehul Acharya, says that unlike tuberculosis treatment where a directly observed treatment (DOTS) system is followed permitting better monitoring, anti-retroviral therapy (ART) for HIV, AIDS patients require them to visit a health centre.

Five key target demographies are female sex workers, male sex workers, truckers, drug abusers and migrants.

Surveillance is primarily conducted under four categories with maximum categories under the general population. Three other categories include pregnant women during antenatal checks (ANC), children below two years of age and children more than two years but less than 18 years of age.

Data provided by the AMC shows that compared to 2019-20 when 1.12 lakh of the general population were tested, this year saw nearly an 80 per cent drop in people tested. As a result, positivity too has gone up this year. However, the rate of linking HIV positive patients with ART has remained constant both years at 97 per cent.

Notably, of the nearly Rs 4.5 crore budget provided by the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) to Gujarat, a significant chunk of Rs 1.68 crore is allocated for targeted interventions for migrants.

Acharya said, “A major reason for our work getting affected this year was owing to the fact that truckers stopped plying during the lockdown and we saw migrants moving away en masse. Sex workers too wouldn’t go out due to the lockdown.”

Acharya says that a peculiar thing about this viral infection is the stigma around it that makes patients reluctant to be forthcoming. “Say a husband tests positive, the next task becomes convincing and counselling his wife to get tested,” he said.

He added that the surveillance activity is expected to pick up as AMC is working with 15 NGOs.

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Bikila Balis

Department of Midwifery, School of Nursing and Midwifery, College of Health and Medical Sciences, Haramaya University, Harar, Western Oromia, Ethiopia

Correspondence: Bikila Balis
School of Nursing, College of Health and Medical Sciences, Haramaya University, Harar, Ethiopia
Tel +251 921788619
Email bik.balis2008@gmail.com

Background: Human immunodeficiency virus infection has been one of the top health-related challenges for the past four decades. Ethiopia is extremely infected by HIV pandemic every year, whereby 22,300 people were newly infected and 690,000 were living with HIV at the end of 2018. Sexual behavior of HIV positive individuals visiting treatment clinics is a neglected issue. Nonetheless, it has been a significant way of HIV transmission to serodiscordant partners.
Methods: A facility-based cross-sectional study design was used on a sample of 432 women attending treatment clinics in west Oromia from February 26 to March 26, 2019. Systematic sampling was used to select the study participants. A pretested and structured interviewer-administered questionnaires were used to collect the data. The data were coded, entered, cleaned and exported to SPSS version 20.0 for analysis. Descriptive statistics were used to present frequency distributions. Variables with P-value < 0.25 during bivariate analysis were entered into multiple logistic regression models to control for all possible confounders. Odds ratio along with 95% CI were estimated to measure the strength of the association. Level of statistical significance was declared at a p-value less than 0.05.
Results: Out of total respondents, 240 (56.9%), 95% CI: (52.1– 61.6%) were involved in risky sexual practices in the prior 12 months. Urban residence [AOR: 3.24, (95% CI: (1.52, 6.89)], those with no formal education [AOR: 2.77, (95% CI: (1.18, 6.54)], being on ART for > 2years [AOR: 2.74, (95% CI: (1.13, 6.65)] and CD4 count ≥ 200 cells/mm³ [AOR: 3.20, (95% CI: (1.50, 6.82)] were factors significantly associated with risky sexual practice.
Conclusion: A considerable number of respondents were involved in risky sexual practices 240 (56.9%) due to being rural residence, not attending formal education, being on ART for > 2 years and CD4 count ≥ 200 cells/mm³.

Keywords: women, HIV/AIDS, risky sexual practices, Oromia, Ethiopia

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It has been over seven months since the United States began locking down because of the new coronavirus, which causes COVID-19. The disease has killed nearly 230,000 Americans, a number that’s expected to grow much higher during the approaching winter. And yet the country does not have a unified national strategy.

An editorial published September 21 in AIDS and Behavior makes the case that a National COVID-19 Strategy is urgently needed—and that guidance for such a plan may be found in the existing National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS).

Launched in 2010, under President Obama’s administration and nearly three decades after AIDS first struck the United States, the NHAS marked the first time the federal government offered a comprehensive battle plan against the HIV epidemic. Numerous stakeholders worked together to create the evidence-based strategy, which was updated in 2015. The NHAS’s vision statement reads: “The United States will become a place where new HIV infections are rare, and when they do occur, every person, regardless of age, gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, or socioeconomic circumstance, will have unfettered access to high quality, life-extending care, free from stigma and discrimination.”

The authors of the AIDS and Behavior editorial view this as a “well-crafted vision statement [that provides] a North Star by which to guide all strategy elements.” Why not have the same type of North Star direct our fight against COVID-19? The vision statement is one of six ways the NHAS offers relevant guidance for a COVID-19 plan. The five others are:

• Major goals [of the NHAS] were defined so as to address disease prevention, treatment and disparities.

• Specific strategies were outlined for each major goal so that program and policy emphases could be identified, and, where possible, the scale of the needed intervention was identified.

• A set of measurable indicators was developed, and an assertive goal established for each (namely in five-year terms but measurable annually).

• These goals were measured and reported upon annually (at least for some time) so as to inform midcourse corrections.

• All aspects of plan development, implementation and measurement were done in as transparent, inclusive and participatory way as possible.

Titled “Core Elements of the National COVID-19 Strategy: Lessons Learned From the US National HIV/AIDS Strategy,” the editorial was authored by David R. Holtgrave, PhD, of the University of Albany School of Public Health; Rondal O. Valdiserri, MD, MPH, from the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University; Seth C. Kalichman, PhD, of the University of Connecticut, Mansfield; Carlos del Rio, MD, of Emory University School of Medicine and Rollins School of Public Health; and Melanie Thompson, MD, from the AIDS Research Consortium of Atlanta.

“Given the severity of the epidemic, we thought there’s a real need for a truly comprehensive plan as urgently as possible,” Holtgrave told Wired magazine in an article on the proposed COVID-19 strategy. “We felt that where we are now is similar in circumstance to HIV: Before the national strategy was written, different federal agencies had handled elements of a plan, but nothing had pulled them together. It’s bringing it all together in one comprehensive place that we’re calling for.”

Since President Trump has decided not to create a national strategy, the authors write, a broad coalition of leaders from the public and private sector must take charge and devise a plan. The authors urge the drafting of a national strategy to be commented upon by the public and edited before being made available to the public by mid-November.

The Wired article notes that some health experts believe that HIV is not the proper model upon which to build a COVID-19 strategy. For example, it may be better to look to our national strategies for battling pandemic influenza or antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which were also developed during Obama’s presidency and may be applicable to the new coronavirus. Regardless, experts agree that a national strategy is in order.

“The fact that we haven’t had a national strategy is a major reason why we’ve been the epicenter of the pandemic for most of 2020,” Peter Hotez, founding dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, told Wired. “And there’s no end in sight.… We’ll be at 300,000 deaths by the end of the year. We could be at 400,000 deaths by the time of the inauguration.”

The post Our National HIV/AIDS Strategy May Offer a Blueprint for Fighting COVID-19 appeared first on MyMedicPlus.

This year’s annual U.S. Conference on HIV/AIDS (USCHA) concluded on October 21 with a plenary session featuring several federal HIV leaders and I was honored to be included. I am grateful to NMAC for convening this conference virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic, enabling the community along with federal and state partners to continue to share important information, strategies, and experiences about HIV, sexually transmitted infections, viral hepatitis, leadership, and race. Following are some highlights of what I shared with the participants.

Status and Next Steps for the Ending the HIV Epidemic Initiative

Naturally, participants wanted to know about the status of Ending the HIV Epidemic: A Plan for America (EHE) given all that has happened this year and what lies ahead for this national initiative. I reiterated that EHE remains a priority at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and that its agencies and offices are moving forward with implementation activities. Some important EHE developments include:

• The 57 jurisdictions prioritized in the initiative’s first phase are working to revise their EHE Plans based on feedback CDC, HHS, and HRSA shared on the draft plans back in March. Acknowledging the impact of the response to COVID-19 on state and local health departments and their key community partners, the deadline for submitting the revised plans was extended to December 31, 2020.
• The Ready, Set, PrEP program, which provides PrEP medications at no cost to individuals who qualify, made some COVID-related adaptations earlier this year to help ensure patient retention in ongoing PrEP care and adherence to medications, and also reduce the burden on the nation’s health care providers and health care systems. The program authorized 90-day prescription fills and implemented automatic enrollment eligibility extensions between June 1 and September 29. We’ll be making enhancements to GetYourPrEP.com , the enrollment portal for Ready, Set, PrEP in the coming weeks. Soon you’ll see additional Ready, Set, PrEP marketing assets featuring real people who take PrEP telling their stories of how PrEP has affected their lives.
• In August, we launched America’s HIV Epidemic Analysis Dashboard, known as AHEAD. It’s an online data visualization tool designed to help jurisdictions, researchers, public health professionals, HIV service organizations, and others across the country track progress towards meeting EHE goals. AHEAD displays graphical representations of data on the six EHE HIV indicators for the 57 jurisdictions prioritized in the initiative, as well as state data for the 21 states in which EHE counties are located. In collaboration with our partners at CDC, additional data was recently added to the site. The new indicator data includes preliminary 2019 data and data on the first quarter of 2020 on HIV diagnoses and linkage to HIV medical care.
• To continue making progress on EHE’s Diagnose strategy, HHS, CDC, HRSA, IHS, and SAMHSA are encouraging and facilitating HIV self-testing options in communities where there has been a reduction in availability of in-person HIV testing due to COVID-19.  Self-testing can be an effective on-going strategy to help identify and link individuals to needed HIV prevention and care services in a post-COVID-19 world.  Jurisdictions are encouraged to explore ways HIV self-testing can help us meet our EHE targets for HIV diagnoses.
• The Prevention through Active Community Engagement (PACE) officers, a team of U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps officers supporting EHE activities in HHS Regions 4, 6, and 9, continue their work to facilitate broad community involvement in the development and implementation of jurisdictional EHE plans. They are also facilitating discussions about the intersection of HIV disparities and social determinants of health and racial inequality.

Damián Cabrera-Candelaria, Treatment Program Manager at NMAC , the USCHA conference convenor, also asked me about efforts to combat racism in health services, whether employment opportunities for people with or affected by HIV will result from EHE, and responding to HIV in Puerto Rico, which was to have hosted this year’s USCHA.

The closing session also featured remarks from my federal colleagues and partners in the EHE initiative: CDC’s Dr. Jonathan Mermin, HRSA’s Dr. Laura Cheever, SAMHSA’s Dr. Neeraj Gandotra, NIH’S Dr. Maureen Goodenow, and NIH’s Dr. Anthony Fauci.  You can view the closing plenary on YouTube. 

Joining many colleagues from across the HIV community, I commend NMAC for innovating this year to make USCHA possible once again and salute their staff along with the many presenters and participants who shared ideas and learned from one another throughout the conference.

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In China, it is said that “one who fails to reach the Great Wall is not a hero”. Well, they certainly cannot say that about you if you have been to the Great Wall to support prevention, treatment, and care of HIV/AIDS in China!

That’s right, sign-ups are now open for the annual China Aids Walk, which this year takes place on Nov 30 just ahead of World AIDS Day on Dec 1. Every year, hundreds of attendees flock to the wall to raise money to help end AIDS and discrimination. So far, the event has raised RMB 1.6 million, but much more is needed to put a stop the disease and the stigma once and for all.

“We are still a long way to go before we finally end AIDS and discrimination,” says Martin Yang, director of China AIDS Walk. “With upcoming progress and technological development, we might be able to end the HIV transmission soon, but discrimination will be a lot harder to fight against. That’s why China AIDS Walk has been raising awareness and funding continuously for the past eight years.”

In fact, China AIDS Walk does more than just raise money. They also get down in the trenches to provide training, workshops, and small grants to support community-based NGOs and young people.

They hope that you will join the fight this year, not only by walking but also by discussing AIDS with those closest to you. As Yang puts it, “We ask each individual to take the time to talk to their friends and family, explain why it’s important to support the AIDS Walk financially and physically. When people come out to the walk on the Great Wall, it is a demonstration of community solidarity, our resolution to fight against the discrimination, and to assure people living with HIV that we are here for them.”

How to participate

Each registrant is advised to raise RMB 500 in money or gifts to donate to the cause. Sign-up for the event includes transportation to and from the Great Wall, a ticket onto the Great Wall, travel insurance for the day, basic walking supplies (bottled water, etc.), tea and snacks in the afternoon, and an official China AIDS Walk 2019 gift bag.

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Let’s talk about drugs—specifically, drugs that keep HIV-positive gay men like me “undetectable,” and the drugs used in PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) that, when taken daily, can prevent HIV-negative gay men (and others) from becoming infected.

That’s essentially the theme for this year’s  Gay men’s HIV/AIDS Awareness day —today, September 27—“The Conversation About HIV Is Changing: Talk Undetectable. Talk PrEP.”

But if we only talk about drugs to prevent and treat HIV, and don’t talk about the trauma behind gay men’s high-risk sexual and drug-use choices, we’ll see that same trauma continue to play out in our disproportionately high rates of crystal meth abuse, alcoholism, and other potentially harmful sexually transmitted infections besides HIV.

There is no question that today’s HIV drugs have dramatically changed the conversation about HIV. From the terrible illness and death that almost inevitably followed a positive HIV test 30 years ago, those of us living with the virus today can expect to live a virtually normal lifespan —so long as we adhere to treatment.

There’s a movement with the slogan “U = U” to emphasize the momentous shift in thinking about what it “means” to have HIV because of studies demonstrating that those of us living with HIV who keep our virus suppressed cannot infect someone else.

Knowing we don’t put our partners at risk is a huge relief. Educating those who don’t have HIV to understand this fact should help ease the stigma that too many still attach to HIV. If there’s nothing to be afraid of from an HIV-positive person, there likewise should be no reason to rule out sex play or a relationship with that person—or to treat him like a pariah.

Steve Gibson, the founder in 2003 of San Francisco’s gay men’s sexual health clinic Magnet—in 2016, it was blended into Strut, on Castro Street, the city’s one-stop-shop for gay men’s health and well-being—told me in an interview for my book Stonewall Strong that PrEP is transforming how gay men relate to one another across what has often been called the HIV “viral divide.”

“What we’re seeing in San Francisco now,” said Gibson, “is very good public health attempts to encourage disclosure around serostatus. For the first time in my 25 years in public health, the conversation is changing around how positive and negative gay men are talking to each other about terms like ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’ and the stigma we internalized as a community. We know that viral suppression is highly effective and that PrEP is highly effective. So we can have a conversation about our desires.”

That’s a part of the conversation we really need to have if we are serious about supporting gay men’s health. As important as the HIV drugs are, this conversation has to be about more than providing drugs to prevent or treat HIV. In fact it goes well beyond HIV.

We need a conversation about the extraordinary traumas of gay men’s lives beginning when we first become aware of being “different.” We need to talk about the damaged self esteem that leads so many of us to engage in risky sex or medicate our lonoliness and psychic pain with alcohol and other substances.

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A recent HIV vaccine trial has shown ‘surprisingly strong’ effects in a trial on people living in South Africa. The vaccine was trialed on a group of 100 people after an early study in US Army in Thailand produced modest results.

The study was led by researchers from the HIV Vaccine Trials Network in Seattle, Washington.

According to a report in Daily Mail, in the trial, people’s bodies produced significantly higher numbers of immune cells which the body uses to fight off the AIDS-causing virus.

Furthermore, the study authors believe that the bodies were able to fend off HIV with a success rate of more than 31 per cent. It is to be noted that none of the volunteers already had the virus.

Furthermore, study authors found that the immunisation appeared to protect people from multiple strain of HIV, suggesting that it may be possible to create a universal vaccine.

The jab, named RV144 was given to people with an average age of 21 and then measured how their immune systems responded to it.

The study authors found that the white blood cells, called CD4+T cells which the body uses to fight off HIV, rose significantly in all the participants, regardless of their age or sex.

According to scientists, the participants developed HIV antibodies – immune system proteins matched specifically to the virus – after they were vaccinated.

According to study authors, the participants developed immune protection against multiple strains of the HIV virus — AE, B and C.

Speaking about it, Dr Larry Corey, lead author of the study said that this breaks open the thought pattern that each region of the world needs a separate type of HIV vaccine based upon their circulating strains.

While there are medications which can suppress the virus in patients, they are not always available in poorer countries. Thus, the quest for the vaccine is a ‘global imperative’ one according to the Seattle team.

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