Working up the courage to discuss your sex life with a health worker is challenging at the best of times. For men who have sex with men and transgender women, it'€™s simply too tough to contemplate and many of them simply decline seeking healthcare or delay until it is too late. A clinic in Cape Town is changing that.

In a huge blow to HIV prevention, a major trial of a vaginal gel expected to protect women was stopped on Friday (25 Nov) after it was found to have no effect on preventing HIV. This result was unexpected and contradicted an earlier trial of the same vaginal gel, called a microbicide, containing the antiretroviral tenofovir.