Wellcome Trust, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the African Academy of Sciences have joined together in a new initiative to make clinical practice guidelines more efficient and adaptable for clinical trials that require less stringent approaches, such as those that take place during infectious disease outbreaks. Additionally, by applying a more flexible approach towards the application of these guidelines, the initiative also hopes to make them “future proof,” or able to better incorporate new technologies. Continue reading ->
A report launched jointly today by Population Services International (PSI), London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the World Health Organization shows that people’s knowledge of their HIV status in sub-Saharan African countries nearly doubled just four years after self-testing programmes were introduced. Separately, a group of French NGOs called on the French President to lead elimination of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria by 2030. Continue reading ->
As the 2018 International AIDS Conference kicks off in Amsterdam (23-27 July), Gottfried Hirnschall, Director of the HIV/AIDS Department and the Global Hepatitis Programme of the World Health Organization, discussed in a wide-ranging interview with John Zarocostas for Health Policy Watch the advances, setbacks, and challenges ahead in the global fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic. On 18 July, a new report by UNAIDS warned that new infections are rising in around 50 countries, and that AIDS-related deaths are not falling fast enough and flat resources are threatening success. Dr Hirnschall leads the WHO's work in development and implementation of cutting-edge normative policies and guidance, and of technical support to countries to scale up national responses to HIV and hepatitis. He also oversees the Global Hepatitis Programme, which coordinates the organisation’s response to viral hepatitis. Hirnschall holds an MD from the University of Vienna, Austria, and an MPH from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Continue reading ->