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ICAD Blog

Month: <span>December 2018</span>

How Keyhole Gardens Are Helping the Battle Against HIV/AIDS
December 19, 2018

By Help Lesotho

Grandmothers are the key support structure for children in Lesotho and are essential to their survival. Many of them have lost their own children and family members to HIV/AIDS, leaving them confused, lonely and grief-stricken.

Despite their own poverty, illnesses and hopelessness, grandmothers have opened their homes and hearts to Lesotho’s orphaned children, filling the role of parents and guardians. They have the burden and the unique opportunity to support their grandchildren to become educated young leaders.

One such grandmother (‘nkhono’), Nkhono ‘Mafese’s life has been a series of tragedies. She became a widower after 20 years of marriage when her husband contracted Tuberculosis from working in … Read more →

 

Canada’s hidden HIV epidemic
December 7, 2018

By Laurie Edmiston, CATIE Earlier this year, I witnessed a profound historic moment at the International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam. Dr. Alison Rodger, a leading HIV researcher in the United Kingdom, presented the final results from a study of couples with one HIV-positive and one HIV-negative partner. After eight years of the study, she reported, there were zero cases of HIV transmission from one partner to the other – thanks to the prevention benefits of modern HIV medications. The evidence has been mounting for years. Several large clinical trials have confirmed that HIV treatment can suppress the virus so successfully that sexual transmission doesn’t occur. Three-quarters of Canadians diagnosed with … Read more →

 

Closing the Gap? Cut the Crap!
December 4, 2018

New Research Priorities from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) Restricts Prevention Options By Marc-André LeBlanc, Founding member of IRMA

International Rectal Microbicide Advocates (IRMA) and our many partners and allies believe we need an array of HIV prevention options. There has been enormous progress in the field of HIV prevention research in recent years. The remarkably high efficacy of antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) for prevention has been demonstrated, both for oral pre-exposure prophylaxis ( PrEP, now approved and subsidized in several countries ) and through treatment leading to viral suppression or “undetectability” ( U=U, Undetectable = Untransmittable ).

Microbicide—products that could be used vaginally or rectally to reduce a … Read more →

 

Bridging the Gap Between Community and Researchers
December 4, 2018

By Jes Hovanes, Communications and Social Media Officer, CIHR Canadian HIV Trials Network There is a line in Tony Kushner’s 1991 play Angels in America where, in the early days of the HIV epidemic, the character Belize, a nurse working in the AIDS ward in New York, warns Roy Cohn, who is dying of AIDS, to “watch out for the double-blind. They’ll want you to sign something that says they can give you M&M’s instead of the real drug. You’ll die, but they’ll get the kind of statistics they can publish in The New England Journal of Medicine…” Thankfully, this portrayed gap between the interests of medical researchers and the … Read more →

 

A Message From a U=U Warrior: “Rest in Peace HIV-related Stigma, you will NOT be missed”
December 1, 2018

By Jeff Potts (with permission) To suggest, on this 30th World AIDS Day (and for me personally, the 28th), that I am not profoundly overwhelmed or just a little bit exhausted would be disingenuous to be sure. I stood alongside and with some of the most-amazing, history-making people today, at the foot of Centre Block where I witnessed and was part of the most incredible moments this country’s HIV community has ever experienced. I was truly wiped when I got home… it was the most exhilarating kind of tired I’ve felt in a very long time. Today, the AIDS Committee of Ottawa kept its promise to leave an indelible mark … Read more →

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