By Martha Henry Major HIV prevention trials are underway in African countries, including Botswana, Kenya, South Africa, Uganda, and Zambia. These trials involve hundreds of thousands of people and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. But how will we know if they work?
“We strongly believe that with this project we have the chance to make history in the fight against AIDS,” said Michelle Gavin, U.S. Ambassador to Botswana, at the November 8th press conference in Gaborone announcing the launch of the Botswana Combination Prevention Project.
A new book, HIV/AIDS Treatment in Resource Poor Countries: Public Health Challenges, edited by Drs. Yichen Lu, Max Essex and Chris Chanyasulkit, focuses on HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment strategies. Contributors include researchers from the U.S., Africa, China, and Thailand. Highlights include a foreword by Dr. Gerald Chan and chapters on AIDS treatment programs in China.
trtransmissionMartha Henry, Editor of Spotlight, asked Dr. DeGruttola about the Botswana Combination Prevention Project. Dr. Victor DeGruttola, Chair of the Dept. of Biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health, is the Co-Principal Investigator of the Botswana Combination Prevention Project (BCPP). The BCPP is a large clinical trial that combines available HIV prevention methods to try to control HIV at a community level.
When the United Nations presented their 2009 Progress Report on HIV/AIDS in late September, there was good news. Over a million people in the developing world began treatment with antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) last year. Tremendous strides have been made in preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Yet the news was tempered by the fact that 2.7 million people became newly infected in 2007, the last year for which estimates exist. Preventing…
Continue reading “The Mochudi Project: A Community Approach to AIDS Prevention”
Participant List | Program From June 12-15, 2008 participants convened in Gaborone, Botswana for the conference, “Prevention and Control of the HIV Epidemic in Botswana: Surveillance, Modeling and Implementation of Interventions.”
