Biomedical Prevention

The elimination of HIV and syphilis from Puerto Rico as per metrics of the World Health Organization has been achieved despite continued HIV risk and high background prevalence. Excellence in antenatal services and screening, deployment of antiretroviral and penicillin syphilis therapies, and proper follow-through with mothers and infants has yielded success even as control of infection overall remains elusive. We highlight the context of this achievement in our editorial to accompany the article: "

Recent advances in the field of biomedical prevention have induced optimism among both the scientific community and the public in general. The discussion of the research evidence is complemented with a discussion of the implications of this evidence for the Caribbean, highlighting the issues and controversies that should be considered in order to encourage and advance the responsible consideration of biomedical strategies. Traditionally, HIV prevention strategies have been characterized as predominantly behavior, social or biomedical. In practice, however, some strategies defy classification: even when they rely on technological or pharmaceutical elements, they have to be adopted by a society and the individuals within it. Moreover, whatever the strategy used, it will have to be distributed, implemented and made available through health care systems or other means. And its cost will be absorbed by specific funders or by society in general. Given the current historical context of the...

Recent advances in the field of biomedical prevention have induced optimism among both the scientific community and the public in general. The discussion of the research evidence is complemented with a discussion of the implications of this evidence for the Caribbean, highlighting the issues and controversies that should be considered in order to encourage and advance the responsible consideration of biomedical strategies. Traditionally, HIV prevention strategies have been characterized as predominantly behavior, social or biomedical. In practice, however, some strategies defy classification: even when they rely on technological or pharmaceutical elements, they have to be adopted by a society and the individuals within it. Moreover, whatever the strategy used, it will have to be distributed, implemented and made available through health care systems or other means. And its cost will be absorbed by specific funders or by society in general. Given the current historical context of the...

Recent advances in the field of biomedical prevention have induced optimism among both the scientific community and the public in general. The discussion of the research evidence is complemented with a discussion of the implications of this evidence for the Caribbean, highlighting the issues and controversies that should be considered in order to encourage and advance the responsible consideration of biomedical strategies. Traditionally, HIV prevention strategies have been characterized as predominantly behavior, social or biomedical. In practice, however, some strategies defy classification: even when they rely on technological or pharmaceutical elements, they have to be adopted by a society and the individuals within it. Moreover, whatever the strategy used, it will have to be distributed, implemented and made available through health care systems or other means. And its cost will be absorbed by specific funders or by society in general. Given the current historical context of the...

Recent advances in the field of biomedical prevention have induced optimism among both the scientific community and the public in general. The discussion of the research evidence is complemented with a discussion of the implications of this evidence for the Caribbean, highlighting the issues and controversies that should be considered in order to encourage and advance the responsible consideration of biomedical strategies. Traditionally, HIV prevention strategies have been characterized as predominantly behavior, social or biomedical. In practice, however, some strategies defy classification: even when they rely on technological or pharmaceutical elements, they have to be adopted by a society and the individuals within it. Moreover, whatever the strategy used, it will have to be distributed, implemented and made available through health care systems or other means. And its cost will be absorbed by specific funders or by society in general. Given the current historical context of the...

Recent advances in the field of biomedical prevention have induced optimism among both the scientific community and the public in general. The discussion of the research evidence is complemented with a discussion of the implications of this evidence for the Caribbean, highlighting the issues and controversies that should be considered in order to encourage and advance the responsible consideration of biomedical strategies. Traditionally, HIV prevention strategies have been characterized as predominantly behavior, social or biomedical. In practice, however, some strategies defy classification: even when they rely on technological or pharmaceutical elements, they have to be adopted by a society and the individuals within it. Moreover, whatever the strategy used, it will have to be distributed, implemented and made available through health care systems or other means. And its cost will be absorbed by specific funders or by society in general. Given the current historical context of the...

Recent advances in the field of biomedical prevention have induced optimism among both the scientific community and the public in general. The discussion of the research evidence is complemented with a discussion of the implications of this evidence for the Caribbean, highlighting the issues and controversies that should be considered in order to encourage and advance the responsible consideration of biomedical strategies. Traditionally, HIV prevention strategies have been characterized as predominantly behavior, social or biomedical. In practice, however, some strategies defy classification: even when they rely on technological or pharmaceutical elements, they have to be adopted by a society and the individuals within it. Moreover, whatever the strategy used, it will have to be distributed, implemented and made available through health care systems or other means. And its cost will be absorbed by specific funders or by society in general. Given the current historical context of the HIV/ AIDS epidemic and the array of strategies required to control it, these distinctions (biomedical vs. behavior) can hinder the collaborations required to provide the needed combinations of strategies. The efficacy of the diverse strategies range from: 99% for programs to prevent MTCT, 63% for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), 96% for treatment as prevention, 39% for vaginal microbicides (54% with good adherence), post exposure prophylaxis (PEP), 31% for a vaccine and 53-60% for medical voluntary adult circumcision. To curtail and eliminate the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the future, expansion and scaled-up implementation of combinations of such strategies will be needed. [P R Health Sci J 2012;3:170-179]

, to the fields of tropical medicine and public health. The articles will appear in several consecutive issues, and will address various themes as follows: 1) historical antecedents of the STM, particularly institutional precedents; 2) the educational legacy of the STM; 3) a history of the STM scientific journal ("The Puerto Rico Journal of Public Health and Tropical Medicine"); 4) the scientific practices and representations that prevailed at the institution; and, 5) a brief sociocultural history of malaria in Puerto Rico, mainly from the perspective of the STM's scientific and public health activities. The authors have systematically and comprehensively studied a wide variety of documents from different sources based on multiple archives in Puerto Rico, the United States and England. The authors treat the fluid meanings of the examined historical encounters from a research perspective that privilege complex reciprocal interactions, multiple adaptations and elaborate sociocultural constructs present in a collaborative exemplar of the modernity of medical science in a neocolonial tropical context.