West African countries focus on post-Ebola recovery plans →

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It has been more than 6 months since the last diagnosis of Ebola in Guinea, Sierra Leone or Liberia. The three west African countries suffered nearly all of the more than 28,600 diagnosed cases and 11,300 deaths during the outbreak that began in December 2013 in a Guinean village.
Although the outbreak has ended, the scale of the epidemic collapsed these countries' health systems, while unleashing new medical crises. The capacity to treat even basic illnesses is now limited, while health needs of Ebola survivors stretch the services that do remain. With Ebola having killed health workers at a disproportionate rate, the years-long efforts to rebuild the health systems are only just beginning. Officials in all three settings acknowledge that the task ahead is immense.

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Aid groups grapple with stigmatization in HIV prophylaxis roll-out →

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The success of a promising HIV prevention intervention in sub-Saharan Africa — the region with the highest burden of HIV — will hinge more on the social than the scientific. Researchers and advocates will have to strike a balance in how they market and roll out pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). They have to ensure that it reaches stigmatized populations with high HIV transmission rates, such as MSM and sex workers. But they must ensure it is not perceived as exclusively a treatment for marginalized groups, which will lower its appeal both within those communities but also to other people who could benefit from it. Read more.

Kenya's troop withdrawal could seal the fate of South Sudan's peace process →

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In a sharp rebuke to the United Nations, Kenya has started the process of pulling its troops from the U.N. peacekeeping mission in South Sudan. To make matters worse, Kenya is simultaneously disengaging from peace efforts in South Sudan, where a 15-month-old agreement to bring together warring parties was already on the verge of collapse. The moves by Kenya, which has been a key regional force in pushing for South Sudanese stability, could cement its failure. Read more.

Ethiopia's state of emergency silences aid workers →

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The Ethiopian government’s recently imposed state of emergency, which followed months of clashes between political protesters and security forces, has imposed new curfews, limited the movement of civilians and diplomats and outlawed opposition media.

It has also largely silenced the extensive international aid community operating in the country from speaking about what effect the current political dynamic is having on their work. Read more.

NIH project focuses on integration of HIV and NCD care →

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For millions of patients, HIV has been transformed into a highly treatable, chronic condition thanks to the development and distribution of increasingly sophisticated combination therapies. These advances have come with another unanticipated outcome, though. Researchers and health workers now worry they may lose patients they have saved from AIDS-related illnesses to non-communicable diseases, including cardiovascular disease, cervical cancer, depression, and diabetes. Read more.

Global health funding faces a shortfall of billions to fight diseases →

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The international public health community that has watched itsfinancing dwindle, even as scientific advances make it increasingly possible to actually end some of the world’s worst diseases. That includes HIV, officially the deadliest epidemic in history. The decline in global health funding threatens not just to stymie scientific advances against diseases like HIV, but to actually reverse gains made in the past decade. Read more.

How to build on what works to improve health markets →

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Despite the many challenges to developing health markets in low- and middle-income countries, there are programs — often efforts to treat specific illnesses — that have shown enormous success in meeting the needs of some health consumers. Now, to improve markets, innovators in some places are looking to layer additional services onto those systems — and they are pursuing partnerships with a variety of actors in order to do so. Read more.

AIDS funding is in crisis. Who will step up? →

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Scientists say the tools are available to end the AIDS epidemic. But public health interventions are running out of money. And even as officials talk about the approaching end of a pandemic that has killed more than 35 million people, the goal of eradicating AIDS is looking ever further away.

Funding has dropped before, but this time seems different, said Mike Podmore, the director of STOPAIDS. Global fatigue has set in after nearly two decades of funding the AIDS response. Donors are pushing middle-income countries to take on a greater share of funding their HIV/AIDS programs, but health budgets and systems are already stretched. Some costs can be cut by delivering services more efficiently, though that approach is unlikely to bring about the end of AIDS.

All this added up means the indefinite continuation of the world’s deadliest epidemic. Read more.

The world spent $1 billion less on AIDS, jeopardizing decades of progress →

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The 21st International AIDS Conference convened last week amid an emerging global consensus that the end to an epidemic that has killed 35 million people might be achievable. Just weeks before the conference, a high-level meeting of United Nations members in New York issued a declaration renewing commitments to end AIDS by 2030.
That optimism faded as delegates arrived in Durban to news that donor countries had reduced global HIV funding by more than $1 billion from 2014 to 2015. The reduction could jeopardize the remarkable gains made from investments over nearly two decades, including tens of billions of dollars from the United States.

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As AIDS money shrinks, who loses? →

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As the global public health community gathered in the South African city of Durban this week to talk about the end of AIDS, they were greeted with news that annual international support for combating the epidemic had fallen by more than US$1 billion.

Many of the world’s middle-income countries say they are willing to take on that challenge, and with it the opportunity to assume more control in guiding their national programs. However, there are deep concerns, both among officials and activists.

Governments fret that there is not enough time to plan and guide the rapid pace of the transition, which could cause critical services to be interrupted. And civil society groups are concerned that the move to greater dependence on domestic funding will allow administrations that already criminalize specific groups – including gay men and sex workers – to drop HIV services for them entirely. Read more.