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I heard yesterday about the new Barbie collection. I am not particularly a toy enthusiast but a friend posted this new Barbie collection on my Facebook page. The reason why my friend posted it on my page is because this new collection, consists of 17 inspiring women. From all the inspiring women chosen, Frida Kahlo, my favorite artist, is one of them. Frida Kahlo and her doll The posting produced a few comments from some of my friends. Very interesting observations that raised questions

The rate of new HIV infections has halved since 2011 in a Ugandan community following large increases in male circumcision, antiretroviral treatment and viral suppression, Frank Kagaayi of the Rakai Health Sciences Program told the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Boston on Tuesday. Dr Kagaayi was presenting results from the Rakai Community Cohort Study, focusing on repeat surveys of one fishing village with a very high prevalence and incidence of HIV infection. The

“Now if there's a smile on my face it's only there trying to fool the public…But don't let my glad expression give you the wrong impression… Like a clown I appear to be glad…But ain't too much sadder than the tears of a clown when there's no one around – Smokey Robinson The saddest kind of sad is when your tears can’t even fall and you feel nothing. Your world has ended, you don’t cry, you don’t speak, you don’t hear, you don’t see. You just stay there sunken and hollow an

Dan Barouch presenting at CROI 2018. Photo by Liz Highleyman Treatment with a broadly neutralising antibody plus an immune-stimulating drug led to long-term viral remission after interrupting antiretroviral therapy in a monkey study, according to data presented at the 25th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI 2018) this week in Boston. Monkeys that received both the antibody, known as PGT121, and the TLR7 agonist GS-9620 maintained an undetectable viral load withou

- Researchers find 22% of prescription drug spending in Canada is out of pocket - Cost of drugs leaves many Canadians cutting back on medication and essentials - Cost-related non-adherence increases health complications and healthcare burden Canadian public health insurance plans pay for hospital and physician services that are considered medically necessary. However, prescription drugs are another matter. According to a team of researchers at universities in British Columbia and Ontario, t

- Gilead applauds Ontario’s Ministry of Health for expanding access to curative hepatitis C therapies to all diagnosed patients, regardless of severity of illness - Ontario’s expanded access includes EPCLUSA®, a 12 week treatment for patients with chronic hepatitis C across all six genotypes - Gilead’s new product, VOSEVI™ is now available under the Ontario Drug Benefit Program - The removal of the fibrosis level criterion for access furthers Canada’s commitment to the World Heal

I had a conversation with this guy, Sammy (not his real name) and I feel I should share it so that other people learn the facts. Sammy: Hi Kim? (the short name of Kimutai) Kemboi: Hi to you bro, how is the going? Sammy: All is well, how about you? Kemboi: Everything is perfect, just up and down as a routine. Sammy: There is something that has been disturbing my mind for a while now and I have tried asking and researching but I am not convinced by the responses. That is why I thought of a

People with HIV who have other medical conditions such as high blood pressure or high lipids appear to do better if they have a primary care physician as well as an HIV physician, according to a study of people receiving care through UCLA Center for Clinical AIDS Research and Education, researchers report in The Journal of Infectious Diseases. A second study, looking at chronic medical conditions, or co-morbidities, in a large sample of people with HIV in the United States found that high b

Day 180. Fantasy Potluck On May 9 1865, 152 years ago today, President Andrew Johnson officially declared that the Civil War had ended. By then, well over 700,000 Americans had lost their lives. This morning I’m thinking of the Trump voters in my life and wondering how we’re going to come back together, call a truce, practice amnesty, cross the aisle. How do we reunite with such hatred, persecution and division occurring across the land? Continued accusations and mean-spirited interaction

- Hepatitis C co-infection increases risk of pregnancy complications for women with HIV - Women co-infected with hepatitis C had higher HIV viral loads when giving birth - Researchers suggest screening women with HIV for hepatitis C before pregnancy Due to shared routes of infection, co-infection with hepatitis-causing viruses, particularly hepatitis B-virus (HBV) and/or hepatitis C virus (HCV), is relatively common among some people with HIV. To find out more about the impact of these viru

Increased time spent living with depression is associated with poorer engagement with the HIV care continuum, investigators from the United States report in JAMA Psychiatry. Chronic depression was associated with missing appointments, a detectable viral load and an increased mortality risk. “We found that a greater proportion of time spent with depression increased the risk of missed primary care appointments and lack of viral suppression in a dose-response manner,” comment the autho

ISTOCKPHOTO Oren Adamson received a prescription for pre-exposure prophylaxis treatment in July of last year. Also known as PrEP, the once daily pill is believed to reduce the risk of contracting HIV by more than 90 per cent. Health Canada approved PrEP in the form of the drug Truvada last year, but it has remained too expensive for many patients at $1,000 month. It's considerably cheaper – $70 – in the United States, prompting Mr. Adamson to drive from his home in Vancouver across the bo

Part 1:  The frog   These days my emotional orbit seems to range wider than the Voyager 1 Space probe. True, that’s overly dramatic and quantifiably false, but cosmic exaggeration aside, there does seem to be some distant, vast and dark void between my moods. Last year was tough. Somewhere between a doozy and a mind-fuck, a roller coaster and a road trip with people you hate. But that assessment makes me wince. How can frustration coexist with thirty years of living well with HIV?  Surv

The Ontario AIDS Network (OAN) board announced February 22 that Paul Lapierre is no longer the Executive Director of the OAN as “it is now time to move in a new direction”. The announcement followed a period of intense criticism from OAN member organizations, social media and the poz community in particular. Some of that criticism, which PositiveLite.com reported on here, involved omission of U=U messaging from the OAN’s World AIDS Day campaign in favour of more generic messaging. It�

The biggest barrier to HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) becoming more available and more widely used is not cost so much as widespread acceptance of the status quo in HIV prevention, the first-ever European PrEP Summit, held in Amsterdam ten days ago, heard. Ignorance – among politicians, among healthcare workers, and among potential users of PrEP – was the main reason Europe lags far behind the USA in PrEP provision, despite there being a possibly more favourable climate in terms of p