How to beat HIV

Studies are under way to determine why HIV prevention methods such as voluntary medical male circumcision and prophylactic drug treatment have not been adopted as widely as they could have been, an article in the journal Nature reports. These implementation science studies aim to bridge the gap between efficacy in clinical trials and impact on the epidemic in “real-world” settings. One example is the Sustainable East Africa Research in Community Health (SEARCH), which has enrolled more than 335,000 people in Kenya and Uganda. It is described as being at the forefront of a shift in thinking about how best to deal with HIV, to a growing consensus that “the tools needed to stamp out HIV already exist if they could just be used in the right way” (Nature, 7 July 2015).