Anna Forbes is a writer, organizer and women's health activist who has been working fulltime in HIV/AIDS since 1985. She currently works as an independent consultant with an international client base and is specializing in advocacy to expand HIV prevention, particularly for those at highest risk of HIV.
PrEP works when used properly. So why don’t women use it?
On January 7, the Microbicide Trials Network (MTN) made the welcome announcement that it had added the first clinical trial of a microbicide for women living with HIV to its research portfolio.
Have you ever been part of an attempt to set a new record in the Guinness Book of World Records? Want to help break an existing world record while also helping to increase access to HIV prevention tools? If so, YOUR MESSAGE can be featured in what we hope will become the world’s longest chain of paper dolls. It will be on display as at the International AIDS Conference in Washington DC this July.
People who participate in clinical trials take the enormous step of volunteering to test a product that may be useful and, sometimes, life-saving if it turns out to be effective. They play an irreplaceable role in research to prevent, treat, and sometimes cure illness – as well as to find other ways to improve people’s health and lives.
Proof that PrEP works – that there is, literally, a pill can help to prevent HIV — is an extraordinary breakthrough, as was the news received last summer that an effective vaginal microbicide had been identified. But what does a study focused on people engaging in rectal-penile sex have to do with women and their reproductive health? There are many ways to answer that question — some of them cause for celebration and some reasons for real concern.
