HSPH AIDS Initiative newsletter features Q&A with Prof. Max Essex, profile of researcher Vladimir Novitsky

The HAI Spotlight Summer 2011 issue, produced by the Harvard School of Public Health AIDS Initiative includes the following stories:

Surprise Finding in the Newly Infected
In a paper published this April in AIDS, HAI researchers found that a significant number of people recently infected with HIV-1C, the HIV subtype predominant in southern Africa, maintain a high level of HIV in their blood and semen for a much longer period than was expected.

Antiretroviral Therapy Protects Uninfected Partners
Researchers involved in a large multinational study recently announced that men and women with HIV who take antiretroviral drugs have a 96% lower risk of transmitting the virus to their sexual partners.

Q&A with Max Essex: Is African AIDS Different?
Besides trying to the find the most effective methods to treat and prevent HIV/AIDS, Max Essex, Chair of the Harvard School of Public Health AIDS Initiative, has been trying to understand why southern Africa is the epicenter of the epidemic.

Profile: Dr. Vladimir Novitsky
Vladimir Novitsky, principal research scientist in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at HSPH, grew up in the Soviet Union idolizing Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Now he is working to understand why the AIDS epidemic is so much worse in southern Africa than elsewhere, and how to control the virus.

Michelle Obama in Botswana
First Lady Michelle Obama met former Botswana Supreme Court Justice Unity Dow on a recent trip to the country. Dow gave Obama a copy of her book Saturday Is for Funerals, co-authored with Max Essex.

First Fulbright–Fogarty Fellows in Botswana
For the first time this fall, the Botswana–Harvard Partnership will host two Fulbright–Fogarty Fellows. The program, sponsored in partnership with the National Institutes of Health, was established to promote the expansion of research in public health and clinical research in resource-limited settings.

Download a pdf of the current issue.

Learn more

AIDS at 30: Hard Lessons and Hope (Harvard Public Health Review)

HIV/AIDS coverage (Harvard Public Health Review)