The INFO Project Blog

Recently I was introduced to a fabulous new tool designed to combat HIV/AIDS related stigma.  “Pos-or-not” sponsored by MTV Networks is a game of sorts that allows user to decide if a man or woman is HIV+ based solely upon his or her looks and a brief description of their personality.  The site was designed to show individuals that there is no way an someone can tell if an inidividual is HIV positive or not based upon their looks.  The site was based upon the “Hot or Not” site, where users decide if a picture of someone presented is hot or “not” (hot).

Egypt’s Health Minister Hatem el-Gabali announced an $80 million USD family planning campaign last week with the slogan “two children per family - a chance for a better life.” Since Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has come to power he has urged Egyptian families to plan their families and have fewer children.

Mubarak has stated that at current growth rates the population of Egypt will double by the year 2050 in the absence of increased uptake of family planning. Egypt is the 16th most populous country in the world, according to the CIA.

I never knew that  so many useful surveys on contraceptive prevalence are out there.  While researching vasectomy prevalence for an upcoming issue of Population Reports I learned that the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) are not the only source for data on population, health and nutrition.   A vital source of family planning data can also be drawn from UNICEF’s Multiple Inidcator Cluster Survey (MICS).   The third round of MICS surveys has been completed and UNICEF provides data for certain countries where DHS data is not available. 

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An exciting and promising discovery was announced at Microbicides 2008 in New Delhi, India.  According to a six-month study of 200 women in India and the United States a vaginal microbicde gel containing the antiretroviral agent tenofovir is safe for HIV-negative women to use every day.

The study was performed by researchers at the Microbicides Trial Network and was designed to see if there were differences in adherence rates between women who use the product every day and women who use the product only prior to engaging in sexual intercourse.  The study also was designed to test if sex act-dependent and daily use were equally safe.  Researchers found women’s adherence to either regime similar and found both approaches equally safe.  The compliance rate was 83 percent among women in the daily use group, and 80 percent among women instructed to use the gel within two hours of having sex.   Read the rest of this entry »

Here at CCP and INFO we mostly talk about reproductive health, however several of our CCP staff are involved in global tobacco control work as part of the Bloomberg Global Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use.   Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York city has pledged $125 million to aid in global tobacco control.  The initiative focuses on tobacco control in 15 key countries where smoking rates are the highest.  The initiative has named five partner organizations to work on in-country tobacco control and awarding grants to smaller organizations.  The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is one of the partner organizations, and CCP has been working with several country teams on tobacco behavior change campaigns.

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