Morning Briefing

In this Huffington Post "Global Motherhood" blog post, Peter Hotez, president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, describes female genital schistosomiasis (FGS), which affects more than 100 million women and girls in Africa and "causes horrific pain and bleeding in the uterus, cervix and lower genital tract, not to mention social stigma and depression." According to studies, women affected by FGS "have a three- to four-fold increase in the risk of acquiring HIV/AIDS," but a low-cost drug called praziquantel may prevent FGS "and therefore also serve as a low-cost AIDS prevention strategy if it is administered annually to African girls and women beginning in their school-aged years," he notes.