Alice Welbourn questions the role of the health authorities in caring for their own health staff with HIV

A disease of homosexuals, junkies, minorities; the myths surrounding HIV are parasitic, feeding off the vulnerability of those who have already been consigned to the margins of society. They are woven into a fictitious world where the sick and healthy are discrete and identifiable categories, and where membership in each is determined arbitrarily by race, sexual orientation, and gender. They are the myths that the Sophia Forum is seeking to dismantle. Initiated in 2005, the Forum is a voluntary women's network based in UK exploring how HIV affects women at home and abroad. In its panel discussion on October 1st entitled "In Sickness and In Health: Women and HIV in 2009", the Sophia Forum drew attention to the acute need for gender specificity in understanding a condition that effects not merely homosexuals or the "socially marginal", but an estimated 30,000 women in the UK every year.

After profound disappointment with the discussions on "The equal sharing of responsibility between women and men in care giving in HIV/Aids"  at the CSW, Tyler Crone issues a heartfelt plea to all women's rights advocates to get back into the streets and reach out hands.

The fight against prejudice is at the heart of progress plus: the twin pandemics of HIV and violence against women

A self-education in positive masculinity is at the core of efforts to contain the spread of HIV/Aids, writes Patricia Daniel.

The world's experience of living with HIV/Aids in the past generation suggests that tough and far-sighted policies are needed if progress is to be made over the next, says Alex de Waal.

Uganda's experience suggests that education to raise the age of first sexual experience is key to combating HIV/Aids, says Cathy Watson of the Straight Talk Foundation.

The lesson of the international Aids conference in Toronto is that the global Aids industry needs to think strategically to meet the challenges of the next twenty-five years, says Alex de Waal.

To tackle Aids, empowering women will not work without "disempowering" men, says Roger Tatoud, as the sixteenth international Aids conference stresses women's role in combating the disease.

Affordable drugs are crucial for fighting AIDS in developing countries, but the United States puts their availability at risk through its harsh trade agreements. Will Thailand stop the US in its tracks, and help protect access to life-saving treatments for citizens worldwide?

The five-year review of HIV/Aids programmes at the United Nations general assembly from 31 May-2 June is likely to embrace the goal of "universal access". This will represent a refusal to learn from experience, says Tim France.

The rich north's hunger for the poor south's health workers is creating damaging inequalities in global care, says a World Health Organisation report. Ian Hodgson considers the options.

South Africa’s health and public policy towards people infected by HIV is surrounded by a political firestorm – with the German-born nutritionist Matthias Rath at its heart. Ian Hodgson explains.

On World Aids Day 2005, openDemocracy showcases the work of photography NGO Picturing Hope, and learns the benefits of teaching children affected by HIV how to document their lives in pictures

The United States’s global HIV/Aids-related funding is increasingly motivated by religious dogma rather than poeople’s needs, says Ian Hodgson.

A global regime where private corporations can enforce intellectual property rights to the detriment of public health is bad news for the millions most vulnerable to HIV/Aids, reports Tom Burgis.

Since the late 1980s, I have focused on stopping the sexual trafficking of women and girls, and their exploitation and abuse in prostitution. This kind of work against the sexual victimisation of women and girls predated much of the growth of the Aids epidemic and of extensive medical knowledge about its causes. My understanding of the sex trade and its victims has been from the outset rooted in awareness of the harmful nature of sexual abuse and its injury to victims’ dignity, bodily integrity, and identity. After the Bangkok conference, openDemocracy writers debate whether United States policy on global HIV/Aids is self-interested or guided by universal values: Bill Bowtell, “HIV/Aids: global policy after Bangkok” (July 2004) Jeremiah Norris, “Misleading the poor isn’t a policy: a response to Bill Bowtell” (August 2004)

The United States’s policy on global HIV/Aids is far more principled and beneficial than its critics suggest, says Jeremiah Norris of the Hudson Institute.

America’s funding policy towards the global HIV/Aids epidemic is motivated by political and corporate self-interest, says Bill Bowtell.

The catastrophic HIV/Aids pandemic in southern Africa threatens even its most vigorous economy, Botswana. But it is displacement and dispossession that create the greatest vulnerability to HIV. And it may be that rights to land and a people's level of confidence in their own identity are a central means of protection against ravaging illness. Is this what we can learn from the Botswana margins?

What is the main reason for southern Africa’s immense human problems? ‘Famine’ and ‘drought’ are familiar answers from aid agencies and media. Such words are a distraction, says this report from Malawi. The core problem is HIV/Aids, and only changes within African society itself can open the way to solving it.

World Aids Day, 1 December, finds around 42 million people infected with the HIV virus that leads to AIDS. Nowhere is its spread greater than Botswana. Amidst the suffering, does the country’s experience of this devastating illness offer slender hope?