Be contrary and jump to the last line of this important news in today’s New York Times. Usually, the news value of an article or report diminishes toward the end. Yet this major announcement about AIDS vaccine development nearly buries a goal pursued by women’s health and AIDS activists for decades.
The headline: New Drug Provides Total Protection from HIV in Trial of Young African Women (June 21, 2024). An incredible development. As one of the researchers quoted in the article, Dr. Linda-Gail Bekker, noted, “After all our years of sadness, particularly over vaccines, this truly is surreal.” A drug trial found that a twice-a-year injection of a new compound, a drug named lenacapavir, gave young women protection, total protection, from HIV infection.
The last line: “Lenacapavir is also the first HIV prevention drug for which trial results have become available for women before men (emphasis mine); most are tested in gay men in industrialized countries before trials reach African women, long the most vulnerable population.”
African activists, buoyed by the demands in the Global North from groups like ACT UP, had demanded equity for women as participants in AIDS trials to little avail. In the U.S., Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the heads of the National Institutes of Health, refused. The whole federal health bureaucracy in the early 1980s barred women from clinical trials of new drugs.
But this time, women were included. Not only that, but young women, ages 16-25 and pregnant and lactating women were among participants. Community health advocates accepted nothing less. They demanded that women and older adolescent girls who were sexually active must be included.
When I worked for the first U.S.-funded AIDS Communication Project, known as AIDSCOM, 1987-1993, that targeted Global South populations, we struggled to convince Ministries of Health and the U.S. State Department to employ the known AIDS prevention strategies targeting women. Today’s news merits sustained applause for the achievement by thousands of women worldwide ever since the early days of AIDS.
Note: Look for future posts on this blog as I complete my new memoir.
The headline: New Drug Provides Total Protection from HIV in Trial of Young African Women (June 21, 2024). An incredible development. As one of the researchers quoted in the article, Dr. Linda-Gail Bekker, noted, “After all our years of sadness, particularly over vaccines, this truly is surreal.” A drug trial found that a twice-a-year injection of a new compound, a drug named lenacapavir, gave young women protection, total protection, from HIV infection.
The last line: “Lenacapavir is also the first HIV prevention drug for which trial results have become available for women before men (emphasis mine); most are tested in gay men in industrialized countries before trials reach African women, long the most vulnerable population.”
African activists, buoyed by the demands in the Global North from groups like ACT UP, had demanded equity for women as participants in AIDS trials to little avail. In the U.S., Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the heads of the National Institutes of Health, refused. The whole federal health bureaucracy in the early 1980s barred women from clinical trials of new drugs.
But this time, women were included. Not only that, but young women, ages 16-25 and pregnant and lactating women were among participants. Community health advocates accepted nothing less. They demanded that women and older adolescent girls who were sexually active must be included.
When I worked for the first U.S.-funded AIDS Communication Project, known as AIDSCOM, 1987-1993, that targeted Global South populations, we struggled to convince Ministries of Health and the U.S. State Department to employ the known AIDS prevention strategies targeting women. Today’s news merits sustained applause for the achievement by thousands of women worldwide ever since the early days of AIDS.
Note: Look for future posts on this blog as I complete my new memoir.
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