Addressing violence against women: a call to action García-Moreno, Claudia, Dr; Zimmerman, Cathy, PhD; Morris-Gehring, Alison, PhD ...
The Lancet (British edition),
2015-Apr-25, Letnik:
385, Številka:
9978
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Summary Violence against women and girls is prevalent worldwide but historically has been overlooked and condoned. Growing international recognition of these violations creates opportunities for ...elimination, although solutions will not be quick or easy. Governments need to address the political, social, and economic structures that subordinate women, and implement national plans and make budget commitments to invest in actions by multiple sectors to prevent and respond to abuse. Emphasis on prevention is crucial. Community and group interventions involving women and men can shift discriminatory social norms to reduce the risk of violence. Education and empowerment of women are fundamental. Health workers should be trained to identify and support survivors and strategies to address violence should be integrated into services for child health, maternal, sexual, and reproductive health, mental health, HIV, and alcohol or substance abuse. Research to learn how to respond to violence must be strengthened. The elimination of violence against women and girls is central to equitable and sustainable social and economic development and must be prioritised in the agenda for development after 2015.
Defeating AIDS—advancing global health Piot, Peter, Prof; Abdool Karim, Salim S, PhD; Hecht, Robert, PhD ...
The Lancet (British edition),
07/2015, Letnik:
386, Številka:
9989
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Thanks to considerable resources, leadership, community mobilisation, and innovation, enormous gains have been made in controlling the HIV epidemic, saving millions of people from infection and ...AIDS-related illness and death.
Summary Background Epidemiological data show substantial variation in the risk of HIV infection between communities within African countries. We hypothesised that focusing appropriate interventions ...on geographies and key populations at high risk of HIV infection could improve the effect of investments in the HIV response. Methods With use of Kenya as a case study, we developed a mathematical model that described the spatiotemporal evolution of the HIV epidemic and that incorporated the demographic, behavioural, and programmatic differences across subnational units. Modelled interventions (male circumcision, behaviour change communication, early antiretoviral therapy, and pre-exposure prophylaxis) could be provided to different population groups according to their risk behaviours or their location. For a given national budget, we compared the effect of a uniform intervention strategy, in which the same complement of interventions is provided across the country, with a focused strategy that tailors the set of interventions and amount of resources allocated to the local epidemiological conditions. Findings A uniformly distributed combination of HIV prevention interventions could reduce the total number of new HIV infections by 40% during a 15-year period. With no additional spending, this effect could be increased by 14% during the 15 years—almost 100 000 extra infections, and result in 33% fewer new HIV infections occurring every year by the end of the period if the focused approach is used to tailor resource allocation to reflect patterns in local epidemiology. The cumulative difference in new infections during the 15-year projection period depends on total budget and costs of interventions, and could be as great as 150 000 (a cumulative difference as great as 22%) under different assumptions about the unit costs of intervention. Interpretation The focused approach achieves greater effect than the uniform approach despite exactly the same investment. Through prioritisation of the people and locations at greatest risk of infection, and adaption of the interventions to reflect the local epidemiological context, the focused approach could substantially increase the efficiency and effectiveness of investments in HIV prevention. Funding The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and UNAIDS.
Summary Large declines in HIV incidence have been reported since 2001, and scientific advances in HIV prevention provide strong hope to reduce incidence further. Now is the time to replace the quest ...for so-called silver bullets with a public health approach to combination prevention that understands that risk is not evenly distributed and that effective interventions can vary by risk profile. Different countries have different microepidemics, with very different levels of transmission and risk groups, changing over time. Therefore, focus should be on high-transmission geographies, people at highest risk for HIV, and the package of interventions that are most likely to have the largest effect in each different microepidemic. Building on the backbone of behaviour change, condom use, and medical male circumcision, as well as expanded use of antiretroviral drugs for infected people and pre-exposure prophylaxis for uninfected people at high risk of infection, it is now possible to consider the prospect of what would be one of the most remarkable achievements in the history of public health: reduction of HIV transmission from a pandemic to low-level endemicity.
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