August 29, 2002
Low-tech efforts to slow the spread of HIV and give women some control over contraception got a boost yesterday from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which announced $46 million grants for three US universities. The foundation gave $28 million to the University of California-San Francisco to research using the diaphragm to prevent HIV and STDs; $11.9 million to the Contraceptive Research and Development Program at Eastern Virginia Medical School, where scientists are studying microbicides that could protect women from HIV and STDs; and $5.8 million to Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health for a Ugandan study that has found HIV infection might be less common among circumcised men.