The International Community of Women Living with HIV Eastern Africa (ICWEA) is today afternoon holding a science café hosted by Health Journalists Network in Uganda (HEJNU).
The science café follows the release of promising results from two studies, ASPIRE and The Ring Study about the vaginal dapivirine ring’s role in HIV prevention in women. The Science Café is a platform for unique public engagement on issues that may be rather isolated from the general public including journalists. The Café is held in an informal setting that allows for interaction.
The cafe, will focus on two studies, ASPIRE and The Ring Study, which evaluated the safety and efficacy of the vaginal ring. The two studies enrolled over 4,500 women in Malawi, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
The ring contains dapivirine, a drug used in HIV prevention. It is inserted by the women and is left in place for one month during which time, it keeps on releasing the ARV medication (dapivirine) slowly to prevent HIV infection among HIV negative women. It is the first long-acting ARV-based product to enter efficacy testing and the first involving an ARV other than tenofovir or a tenofovir combination.
The Dapivirine ring was found to reduce the risk of HIV infection by 30% in women below 21 years and 60% for women who are above 21 years.
ICWEA is happy about the promising results but notes that the results call for more research to ensure that the ring’s levels of effectiveness and safety are higher than 30% and 60% among women above and below 21 years respectively.
Lillian Mworeko, the Executive Director, ICWEA says, “This is a major step and breakthrough towards having female-controlled HIV prevention methods for women and girls. The advantage with the vaginal ring is that it is discreet. No one needs to know or will know that you are using it. So for women at high risk of HIV for example young women and girls, sex workers and women in violent relationships, the vaginal ring is a good solution especially when the efficacy and safety levels are higher.”
Jacquelyne Alesi, the Executive Director of Uganda Network of Young People Living with HIV/AIDS supplements saying, “Young women and girls continue to be ignored in the HIV response even though statistics show that new infections are highest among them. The world cannot win the fight against AIDS without young people on board so efforts should be made to ensure that the dapivirine ring is as effective and safe to be used by young women aged below the age of 21 as it is in older women. Progress in reducing the new infection will only be made if no one is left behind.”
ICWEA calls upon stake holders to invest more to increase effectiveness and safety levels and eventually add their weight towards speeding up the approval processes, making the product affordable and available to all women, especially those at an increased risk of HIV infection like young women, adolescents girls and sex workers cialis sicher bestellen.
Download the press statement here: http://www.icwea.org/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2016/03/Statement-on-the-vaginal-dapivirine-ring-results.pdf
