Oxfam's focus at the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City this week (3 to 8 July) is the need for predictable financing for health care, and the aggressive legal manoeuvring by the pharmaceutical industry makes vital medicines unaffordable for poor people and countries. Fifty per cent more than the amount currently pledged by G8 nations for HIV and AIDS is needed to meet the goal of universal access by 2010.

You can read reports from Oxfam policy advisers at the conference on the Oxfam International blog.

Oxfam has also released a report, Failing Women, Withholding Protection, on the potential for the female condom to play a larger role in HIV prevention. The female condom is the only female-initiated method which provides protection from HIV infection, as well as preventing pregnancy.

The report argues that the investment needed to increase the choice of available female condoms, to lower prices, and to expand production, is highly feasible, through the collaborative action of donors, governments, civil society organisations and the private sector.