March 08 2016 - The Daily Beast. A small vaginal ring shows promise in the fight against HIV. Will it get the money it needs to make it to market?
Amanda Zikhali was sitting in a small room at the University of the Witwatersrand's Reproductive Health and HIV Institute (Wits RHI) in Johannesburg, South Africa, in February. She was nervous.
For the last two years, the 32-year-old mother of two had worn a flexible, white, silicon vaginal ring. The goal? To see if a slowly released drug called dapivirine could prevent HIV from vaginal sex.
If it could, Zikhali felt sure that her children wouldn't experience what she had growing up. HIV had been so taboo during her childhood that she wasn't permitted anywhere near the homes of people who died from complications of AIDS—entire blocks were off limits to her. She couldn't even recall hearing anyone utter the words HIV or AIDS in her youth. And yet, according to UNAIDS, nearly 4 million women in South Africa live with HIV. Continue reading...