HIV Cure May Be Reality
Posted on | June 8, 2012 | No Comments
Dr Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, the noble prize winning scientist, has tantalizingly suggested that a possible cure for Aids may be imminent.
Revealing that she conceives that a cure for HIV is achievable, but is at present unable to give a time span on the much awaited antidote. It is over 30 years since the virus was noted and in the subsequent years more than 30 million people have succumbed to HIV/AIDS. In this time there has evolved many treatments and preventatives to stem the progression of the illness.
Post-SSRI sexual dysfunction is often an unwanted side effect of certain drugs used in the treatment of HIV/aids. Modern Erectile dysfunction treatments such as Pfizer’s Viagra and Cialis manufactured by Eli Lilly can however negate these unwanted side effects.
Full Article:http://www.uk-med.co.uk/Health/Nobel-Prize-Winner-That-Identified-HIV-Says-Cure-Is-Feasible
HIV No Barrier to Getting Liver Transplant, Study Finds
Posted on | May 20, 2013 | No Comments
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FRIDAY, May 17 (HealthDay News) — Liver transplants to treat a common type of liver cancer are a viable option for people infected with HIV, according to new research.
The Italian study, published May 10 in the journal The Oncologist, found that the AIDS-causing virus doesn’t affect survival rates and cancer recurrence after transplants among HIV patients with this particular type of liver cancer, called hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The study’s authors noted, however, that HCC is more aggressive in people with HIV and it is becoming a major cause of death among these patients as antiretroviral treatment prolongs their lives.
“The key message of this study is that liver transplantation is a valid option for HCC treatment in HIV-infected patients,” the study’s authors wrote in a journal news release. “We suggest that HIV-infected patients must be offered the same liver transplant options for HCC treatment currently provided to HIV-uninfected subjects.”
The study involved 30 HIV-positive patients and 125 patients not infected with HIV who received a liver transplant to treat HCC at three different hospitals in northern Italy between 2004 and 2009.
During a follow-up period of roughly 32 months, the researchers found a recurrence of HCC in 6.7 percent of the patients with HIV and 14.4 percent of the patients who were not HIV positive.
The study also revealed that survival was similar for all of the patients one year after surgery and three years post-surgery.
The researchers, led by Dr. Fabrizio Di Benedetto, associate professor of surgery at the University of Modena, said the HIV-positive patients were treated with antiretroviral therapy until they underwent the transplant. The therapy was not resumed until their liver function stabilized after surgery.
None of the HIV-positive patients developed AIDS during the post-surgery follow-up period. The study’s authors suggested that this may be due to timely resumption of HIV therapy following the liver transplant.
New options in antiviral therapy for people with HIV could improve control of the HIV virus as well as outcomes following liver transplant for HCC, the researchers said.
Patients with HIV undergoing liver transplant for HCC would benefit most from a multidisciplinary approach to care, the study authors said, which would involve collaboration among oncologists, radiologists, gastroenterologists, liver surgeons and infectious disease specialists.
Article source: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_136950.html
Task Force Calls for Routine HIV Testing for All Adults
Posted on | April 30, 2013 | No Comments
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By Julie Steenhuysen
CHICAGO (Reuters) – An influential U.S. panel is calling for HIV screening for all Americans aged 15 to 65, regardless of whether they are considered to be at high risk, a change that may help lift some of the stigma associated with HIV testing.
The new guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), a government-backed panel of doctors and scientists, now align with longstanding recommendations by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for testing of all adults aged 15 to 65, regardless of their risk.
Guidelines issued by the USPSTF in 2005 had recommended HIV screening for high-risk individuals.
Experts said the change, published on Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, will likely trigger coverage for the tests as a preventive service under the Affordable Care Act. Under President Barack Obama’s healthcare law, insurers are required to cover preventive services that are recommended by the task force.
Currently, the healthcare law recommends coverage of HIV testing for adolescents and adults who are at high risk of infection.
“That was based on the 2005 USPSTF recommendations,” Dr. Jeffrey Lennox, a professor of medicine at Emory University School of Medicine and chief of infectious disease at Grady Memorial Hospital, an inner-city hospital in Atlanta.
“Now, hopefully they will go back and re-categorize that and recommend that it will be covered for every adult.”
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services could not confirm the tests would be covered, but Lennox said it may take a while before the agency catches up to the new policy.
For doctors, the new recommendations should help clear up any confusion about testing among some primary-care doctors who have not been offering the test to all their adult patients. “Now, everybody agrees it should be done,” Lennox said.
Task force member Dr. Douglas Owens, a medical professor at Stanford University, said, “We do hope the fact that the guidelines are all very similar will provide an impetus for people to offer screening because it is a very critical public-health problem.”
50,000 NEW INFECTIONS A YEAR
Despite strides in reducing cases of HIV infection in the United States in the past three decades, as many as 50,000 Americans become infected with the virus each year.
The CDC estimates that almost 1.2 million people in the United States are infected with HIV, yet 20 percent to 25 percent of them do not know it.
“The Task Force’s new recommendations will expand the number of Americans who know their HIV status and can take action to protect themselves and their partners,” Dr. Jonathan Mermin, director of the CDC’s Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, said in a statement.
The recommendations are based on evidence showing the benefits and risks of HIV testing and treatment. Recent studies have shown that HIV treatment can reduce transmission of the virus to an uninfected partner by as much as 96 percent.
The group also recommends that teens younger than 15 and adults older than 65 should be screened if they are at increased risk for HIV infection. And it recommends that all pregnant women – including those in labor – who do not know their HIV status should be tested.
The guidelines call for screening at least once for all adults, and it recommends periodic screening for individuals at higher risk of infection. But it does not specify how frequently people at high risk for infection should be tested.
Owens said testing all adults within a certain age range may help reduce any stigma associated with testing and encourage people to get tested.
According to the CDC, stigma has been a major stumbling block that keeps many from seeking out testing, and the hope is that the change will make HIV testing a common part of medical care.
“CDC believes HIV testing should be as routine as a cholesterol test or a blood pressure check – but so far fewer than half of Americans have ever been tested,” Mermin said.
As with the CDC recommendations, the USPSTF guidelines recommend that all individuals be offered the test as well as a chance to opt out of testing.
Lennox and others said it is too early to say whether the new guidelines will result in a significant increase in the number of tests, but the potential for insurance coverage may help.
Dr. Gerald Schochetman, senior director, infectious diseases and diagnostic research for Abbott Laboratories’ Abbott Diagnostics, which makes an HIV test, said the task force recommendation will put more emphasis on the need for all adults in the United States to be tested and should encourage more doctors to discuss the need for testing with their patients.
(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Douglas Royalty)
Article source: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_136353.html
HIV warning over illegal tattooists
Posted on | April 27, 2013 | No Comments
26 April 2013
Last updated at 21:37 ET
Unlicensed tattooists face a prison sentence of up to two years
Illegal unlicensed tattoo parlours are putting customers at risk from HIV and hepatitis, council bosses in England and Wales have warned.
The Local Government Association (LGA) said such operators were more likely to use substandard equipment and conduct inadequate sterilisation techniques.
They were also less likely to check the person’s age or medical history.
The LGA said unregulated tattooists were working in homes, garden sheds or pubs and clubs.
‘Unscrupulous bid’
The organisation said people were being lured away from reputable establishments by cheap deals – but there was an increased danger of contracting serious skin disorders, hepatitis or HIV.
Mehboob Khan, chairman of the LGA’s Safer and Stronger Communities Board, said: “Unlicensed tattooists and parlours continue to operate across the country in an unscrupulous bid to cash in on the growing popularity of body art.
“People looking for a cheap tattoo by using them run the real danger of picking up a serious infection such as hepatitis or HIV or permanent scarring from botched procedures that are often delivered by these dangerous imposters.”
Mr Khan said people who took the risk could end up with a “disfigurement or life-changing health condition”.
He added: “Anyone who is thinking of having a tattoo should do their research and use a registered tattooist.
‘Unrelenting crackdown’
“We would also encourage anyone who has visited an unregistered tattooist to seek medical advice from their GP and report the parlour to their local authority.
“Councils and the police will continue their unrelenting crackdown on these illegal parlours to continue shutting them down and bringing the perpetrators to justice.”
The LGA said there were more than 1,500 licensed tattoo parlours in the UK, with almost three in 10 people aged between 25 and 34 having at least one piece of the body art.
Unlicensed tattooists face a prison sentence of up to two years and unlimited fines, and local authorities can seize their equipment under the Health and Safety at Work Act.
Article source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22320300#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
U.S.-Backed HIV Vaccine Fails; Study Halted
Posted on | April 26, 2013 | No Comments
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By Julie Steenhuysen
CHICAGO (Reuters) – The National Institutes of Health on Thursday halted a study testing an experimental HIV vaccine after an independent review board found the vaccine did not prevent HIV infection and did not reduce the amount of HIV in the blood.
The trial, started in 2009, is the latest in a series of failed HIV vaccine trials. The study, called HVTN 505, had enrolled 2,504 volunteers in 19 U.S. cities, and was looking at men who have sex with men and transgender people who have sex with men.
“This trial has provided a clear, swift answer about a specific vaccine strategy. It’s not the answer we hoped for, but the search doesn’t end here,” Mitchell Warren, executive director of the nonprofit group AVAC: Global Advocacy for HIV Prevention, said in a statement.
“Researchers need to unpack the data from this trial to understand more about why this strategy didn’t prevent infection,” he said.
The review board has recommended that no further vaccinations be given. The National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Disease, which sponsored the study, said it would continue to follow study participants to further evaluate the trial data.
The HVTN 505 trial tested a two-part vaccine strategy designed to first prime the immune system and then provide a vaccine “boost.”
The vaccine itself was based on a common cold virus that was used to sneak HIV genes into the body and grab the attention of the immune system.
So far, there are no vaccines approved to prevent infection with the human immunodeficiency virus or HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
Several HIV trials are still in the works or in planning stages, including a follow-up to a Thai trial which in 2009 showed a vaccine combination cut HIV infections by 31.2 percent. Although the finding was not strong enough to approve the vaccine, it offered the first glimpse that a vaccine could work.
Both of these vaccines – the one in the Thai study and the HVTN 505 study – are largely designed to train immune system cells known as T-cells to recognize and kill cells already infected with HIV.
Researchers are studying other approaches, including vaccines that activate powerful antibodies to prevent HIV from infecting cells in the first place.
Matthew Rose, a vaccine advocate for AVAC who participated in the HVTN 505 study, said he remains hopeful in the search for a vaccine.
“These results do not change the fundamental view that an AIDS vaccine remains critical to any long-term strategy to end the AIDS epidemic,” Rose said.
(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Vicki Allen)
Article source: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_136274.html
HIV ‘could stop within a generation’
Posted on | April 24, 2013 | No Comments
23 April 2013
Last updated at 21:09 ET
The campaign will run for two years
The spread of HIV in England can be stopped within a generation, according to a new prevention campaign funded by the Department of Health.
There are around 90,000 people living with HIV in England. One person in four does not know they have it.
Gay and bisexual men and people in African communities make up three-quarters of cases.
Focused screening and information for high-risk groups could end the epidemic, experts say.
The new It Starts With Me campaign, created by the Terrence Higgins Trust, urges people in high-risk groups to get tested for HIV at least every 12 months, and more frequently if they have symptoms or have put themselves at risk by having unprotected sex, for example.
Effective treatment
Sir Nick Partridge, chief executive at the trust, said: “While a cure or vaccine for HIV remains stubbornly out of reach, what many people don’t realise is that medical advances mean it is now within our grasp to stop the virus in its tracks.
“By getting as many people with HIV as possible tested and on effective treatment, we should see new infection rates fall rapidly.”
He said that to succeed people need to understand that HIV is just as relevant an issue today as it was in 1982.
“Someone, somewhere in the UK is diagnosed with HIV every 90 minutes. Each and every one of us has a responsibility to keep ourselves and each other safe.”
Article source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22261478#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
HIV ‘can stop within a generation’
Posted on | April 24, 2013 | No Comments
23 April 2013
Last updated at 21:09 ET
The campaign will run for two years
The spread of HIV in England can be stopped within a generation, according to a new prevention campaign launched by the Department of Health.
Currently, there are around 90,000 people living with HIV in England. Only one person in four knows they have it.
Gay and bisexual men and people in African communities make up three-quarters of cases.
Focused screening and prevention in high-risk groups could end the epidemic, experts say.
The new It Starts With Me campaign, created by the Terrence Higgins Trust, urges people in high-risk groups to get tested for HIV at least every 12 months, and more frequently if they have symptoms or have put themselves at risk by having unprotected sex, for example.
Effective treatment
Sir Nick Partridge, chief executive at the trust, said: “While a cure or vaccine for HIV remains stubbornly out of reach, what many people don’t realise is that medical advances mean it is now within our grasp to stop the virus in its tracks.
“By getting as many people with HIV as possible tested and on effective treatment, we should see new infection rates fall rapidly.”
He said that to succeed people need to understand that HIV is just as relevant an issue today as it was in 1982.
“Someone, somewhere in the UK is diagnosed with HIV every 90 minutes. Each and every one of us has a responsibility to keep ourselves and each other safe.”
Article source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22261478#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
Anti-HIV Therapy Appears to Protect Children’s Hearts
Posted on | April 23, 2013 | No Comments
For children who have had HIV-1 infection since birth, the combination drug therapies now used to treat HIV appear to protect against the heart damage seen before combination therapies were available, according to researchers in a National Institutes of Health network study.
In the early 1990s, children with HIV were not treated with anti-HIV therapy or were treated with only one drug. In recent years, children, like adults, have been treated with combinations of three or more anti-HIV medications. This combination approach is called highly active antiretroviral therapy, or HAART.
Before the widespread use of HAART, many children with HIV had chronic heart disease. In fact, heart failure was the underlying cause of death for 25 percent of HIV-infected children who died after age 10. However, doctors knew little about whether combination anti-HIV drug therapies could affect the heart. In this study, researchers examined heart structure and function of more than 500 children born to HIV-infected mothers. They then compared the data with results from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)-sponsored Pediatric Pulmonary and Cardiovascular Complications of Vertically Transmitted HIV Infection study of HIV-infected children, conducted in the 1990s.
“The NIH has been committed to investigating the effects of HIV and its treatment on the heart,” said study co-author Rohan Hazra, M.D., of the Maternal and Pediatric Infectious Disease Branch of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), one of ten NIH institutes or offices that supported the study. “Our study indicates that anti-HIV medication may protect the heart.”
First author Steven E. Lipshultz, M.D., of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, and his colleagues collaborated with Dr. Hazra and colleagues at the NHLBI in Bethesda, Md.; as well as with investigators at Harvard University in Boston; Tulane University in New Orleans; Baylor College and Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston; University of Illinois at Chicago; Frontier Science Technology and Research Foundation in Amherst, N.Y.; and Boston Children’s Hospital.
Their findings appear online in JAMA Pediatrics.
The research was conducted as part of the Pediatric HIV/AIDS Cohort Study (PHACS), which receives support from the NICHD, NHLBI, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Office of AIDS Research.
The 500 children in the PHACS study were between 7 and 16 years old. Although all had been exposed to HIV before birth, some were HIV-infected and some remained HIV-uninfected. The HIV-infected children in the current study had, on average, received anti-HIV medications for at least twice as long as children in the study conducted in the 1990s. Roughly 80 percent of the children in the PHACS study were treated with HAART for five years or longer. Although 17 percent of the children in the earlier study received some HAART treatment, none had received HAART for as long as five years.
Researchers measured heart structure and function with echocardiography, a technique that uses sound waves to generate images of the heart. When comparing the echocardiograms among the children who took part in the current study, the researchers found that the hearts of the HIV-infected children were generally slightly less healthy than those of their HIV-uninfected counterparts.
About 45 percent of the children in the 1990s study had an enlarged heart or substantial damage to the heart muscle. In the HAART group, only 4 percent had heart damage.
“We know that before today’s robust treatments were available, HIV-positive children were more likely to have heart infections and inflammation; many also died from heart failure,” said Dr. Lipshultz. “This research followed a rigorous protocol, and the findings suggest that HAART, in addition to being good for treating HIV, does not appear to adversely affect the heart’s function.”
About the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD): The NICHD sponsors research on development, before and after birth; maternal, child, and family health; reproductive biology and population issues; and medical rehabilitation. For more information, visit the Institute’s website at http://www.nichd.nih.gov/.
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Article source: http://www.nih.gov/news/health/apr2013/nichd-22.htm
Study May Explain How Circumcision Reduces HIV Risk
Posted on | April 17, 2013 | No Comments
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TUESDAY, April 16 (HealthDay News) — A new study reveals that circumcision affects the type of bacteria that live on the penis, which could explain why circumcised men have a 50 percent to 60 percent reduced risk of being infected by HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
Circumcision also lowers the risk of infection with other sexually transmitted viruses such as human papillomavirus and herpes simplex virus type 2, researchers have found.
Instead of viruses, however, this study looks another type of microbe: bacteria.
In this study, researchers assessed the numbers and types of bacteria on the penis before and after circumcision. One year after the procedure, there was a significant decline in the total number of bacteria, a drop in the number of anaerobic bacteria (which thrive in locations with limited oxygen), and a slight increase in the number of aerobic bacteria.
The findings were published April 16 in the online journal mBio.
“The change in the communities is really characterized by the loss of anaerobes. It’s dramatic,” study corresponding author Lance Price, of the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Arizona and George Washington University, said in a news release from the American Society for Microbiology.
“From an ecological perspective, it’s like rolling back a rock and seeing the ecosystem change. You remove the foreskin and you’re increasing the amount of oxygen, decreasing the moisture — we’re changing the ecosystem,” he explained.
The exact way that the bacterial community on the penis may affect the risk of HIV infection is not known, but previous research suggests that these bacteria may influence how susceptible the penis is to sexually transmitted viral infections, Price said.
In uncircumcised men, a higher number of bacteria may activate cells in the foreskin called Langerhans cells, preventing them from carrying out their normal role of fighting off viruses. Instead, the activated Langerhans cells may actually help HIV infect the immune system, according to Price.
He said the circumcision-related reduction in the number of bacteria on the penis could prevent the Langerhans cells from doing this.
This research could lead to nonsurgical alternatives to circumcision that would alter the bacterial community on the penis and reduce the risk of HIV infection in men, Price said.
Article source: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_135957.html
Ukraine’s youngest HIV campaigner
Posted on | April 9, 2013 | No Comments
8 April 2013
Last updated at 20:06 ET
Liza Yaroshenko with her adoptive mother Oksana Aligeva
Ukraine is suffering from one of Europe’s worst Aids epidemics but most people with HIV have no access to the drugs that would enable them to lead normal lives – a fact which one teenager, among others, is keen to point out.
As we sit drinking tea in the kitchen, Liza Yaroshenko lays out her pills in neat piles. Some are white, some are yellow and some are in a transparent box marked NIGHT.
Liza, aged 14, carries the HIV virus that causes Aids so her life depends on these anti-retroviral drugs. They have to be taken at exactly the same time, three times a day. I wonder how she remembers – does she have an alarm on her phone to remind her?
“Oh yes,” replies her adoptive mother Oksana Aligeva, “an alarm on two legs – me!” Liza does a classic teenage roll of the eyes, but she knows she can’t afford to get the timing wrong. “The virus can mutate and the pills could stop working,” she explains.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
I hate it when people spread false information – I can’t keep quiet”
End Quote
Liza Yaroshenko
Liza also knows she is lucky to have the medicine. The World Health Organization has said Ukraine suffers from one of the worst Aids epidemics in Europe and not enough is being done to fight it.
Only a third of the officially registered 120,000 people living with HIV receive the drugs, which usually allow them to lead normal lives.
But the Aids Alliance – the biggest independent organisation tackling the disease in Ukraine – estimates that the infected population is at least twice that size. That suggests that just one in six people actually get treatment – one of the lowest levels in the world.
By contrast, some sub-Saharan African countries, such as Botswana and Rwanda, manage to supply 80% of their HIV-infected populations with the life-saving drugs.
Last autumn President Viktor Yanukovych declared that tackling infectious diseases was a priority but the government allocated no funds in 2013 to fighting hepatitis and only 40% of the sum the president proposed for Aids and tuberculosis.
That’s when Liza decided to speak out.
Continue reading the main story
Find out more
Listen to the full report on BBC Radio 4′s Crossing Continents on Thursday, 11 April at 11:00.
Backed by a patients’ lobby group, she went into Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, and stood in front of a microphone. In a faltering yet determined voice, she urged members to block the draft budget.
“Without treatment many parents and children will die from this illness,” she said. “I am begging you not to vote for this budget so that what happened to me will not happen to other children.”
Liza was six years old when she lost her mother to Aids. Like tens of thousands of Ukrainians, Liza’s mother contracted HIV while injecting a cheap heroin substitute made of liquid poppy straw.
The virus often spreads when users share needles. But the opiate solution, known as shirka, can also be contaminated by dirty equipment used by the dealers, or even the use of blood as a mixer.
Liza says her mother spoke fluent English and worked for a while as a translator but then she met a man who introduced her to drugs.
“All of my father’s relatives were dealers – it was the family business,” Liza says. She remembers queues of addicts waiting in the courtyard outside the flat for their fix.
Quilts in Mikhaylovskaya Square in Kiev to commemorate Aids victims
Liza’s mother was eventually sent to prison for possession and served a three-year sentence.
“After her release, Mum tried to give up but dad soon got her hooked again and then she fell ill,” Liza says.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
Do you know how much the government spends on HIV prevention? Zero… literally zero”
End Quote
Andrei Klepikov
Aids Alliance
“I don’t think she knew about anti-retrovirals. It was like a myth – we’d heard there were such medicines but they cost so much that ordinary people didn’t even think of trying to get hold of them.”
In 2005, on the same day her 27-year-old mother died of Aids, Liza found out about her own status.
“We were in the hospital and my grandmother was called into the administrator’s office. When she came out she burst into tears and I thought what terrible thing did they say to her to upset her like that?”
Liza was kept in hospital for eight months following her diagnosis because she ran abnormally high temperatures. One of the first patients in Ukraine to receive anti-retroviral drugs, she has since been fit and well.
She has no contact with her father and when her grandmother became too infirm to look after her, the authorities were preparing to send her to a children’s home. But then Oksana and her husband, who have no children of their own, adopted her.
Although Oksana had imagined adopting a much younger child, she and her husband, Eldar, were touched by Liza’s story and felt they could provide a good home for her.
The authorities blame lack of funds for the shortage of drugs but many say mismanagement and corruption also play a part.
Andrei Klepikov of the Aids Alliance in Kiev says that in 2004, the government bought anti-retroviral drugs at 27 times more than the market rate.
As a result the Global Fund for Aids, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, backed by the former Microsoft boss Bill Gates, cut its grant to the Health Ministry and rechanneled the money through non-state organisations like the Alliance instead.
“It’s like buying a piece of bread for £100! It’s impossible but somehow the Ukrainian government managed to do this. So of course Global Fund was shocked, literally shocked, and this was the first ever grant given to a country that had to be suspended,” says Klepikov.
The Health Ministry denies corruption and argues that major buyers such as the Global Fund can get a lower rate because they buy in larger quantities. It also claims to have cut drug costs over the past several years.
A new law requiring imported medicines to be licensed has triggered protests
But demand for the drugs still vastly outstrips the supply.
“The numbers of HIV-positive people are growing all the time but not the quantities of medicine to treat them”, says Oksana. “And it’s terrible that lots of people who have found out about their status can’t get treatment.”
Oksana says she and Liza were disappointed that deputies in parliament ignored Liza’s appeal.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
Most of my friends already know about my status – on the whole people reacted very well”
End Quote
Liza Yaroshenko
However, three weeks later the President Yanukovych signed a decree instructing ministers to come up with a new budget providing medical care for people living with HIV and Aids. This amended budget will be submitted to parliament next month.
But there is a new source of worry for people with HIV – a law that came into force last month, requiring importers of foreign medicines to obtain additional licences to operate in the Ukrainian market.
The government argues the licensing procedure will assist quality control and boost domestic production. But virtually all anti-retroviral drugs come from abroad at present and many people with HIV fear they’ll be left without the life-saving medication.
Dmytro Sherembey, the HIV-positive head of the patients’ pressure group which helped organise Liza’s appeal in parliament, predicts licences will be issued to those who pay bribes.
“It will bring a profit to the officials and will give them the chance to control Ukraine’s pharmaceutical market. They can give licences to those they want to give them to, and refuse it to others…
“People in Ukraine will die from this law.”
Although the state has stepped up spending on anti-retroviral drugs it does little to bring down the number of new infections.
“Do you know how much the government spends on HIV prevention?”, asks Andrei Klepikov of the Aids Alliance. “Zero… literally zero.”
Work on the front line of the epidemic among the high risk groups such as addicts and prostitutes is left to organisations like the Alliance, he says. The group offers free HIV tests, condoms and crucially – clean syringes.
In 2012, for the first time, there was a slight drop in the number of newly registered cases of HIV in Ukraine.
Liza wants to become a model and an actress
But the Aids epidemic, originally fuelled by drug use, now appears to be spreading to Ukraine’s general population through sexual contact. The stigma associated with the disease is so strong that many are discouraged from even approaching a doctor.
I ask how Liza’s classmates reacted when they saw her addressing the MPs on television.
“Most of my friends already know about my status,” she says. “On the whole people reacted very well and some friendships actually got stronger than they were before.”
Oksana proudly adds that pupils voted Liza president of the school – a position similar to head prefect – after her speech in parliament.
But some of the teachers were less supportive.
One told pupils the HIV virus can be spread through sneezing and holding hands.
“I told her that was rubbish”, says Liza, “and then I was called into the head teacher’s office for a ticking off. But I hate it when people spread false information – I can’t keep quiet.”
Hear the full report on BBC Radio 4′s Crossing Continents on Thursday, 11 April at 11:00. You can listen via the Radio 4 website or via the Crossing Continents podcast.
Article source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21942921#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
Could Self-Testing Help Overcome HIV/AIDS Epidemic?
Posted on | April 4, 2013 | No Comments
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TUESDAY, April 2 (HealthDay News) — Having people test themselves for HIV is effective and could help bring the worldwide HIV/AIDS epidemic under control, a new study contends.
The researchers explained that self-testing, combined with counseling, could improve rates of early detection and treatment, thereby reducing transmission of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
Self-testing for HIV is done at home by collecting samples from the gum lining of the mouth. The test is non-invasive, convenient, private and can provide results within 20 minutes, according to the study, which was published April 2 in the journal PLoS Medicine.
If the self-test indicates that a person has HIV, the results require confirmation at a medical clinic.
In this study, the researchers reviewed 21 previous studies conducted worldwide and concluded that HIV self-testing removes much of the fear and stigma associated with being tested for the disease.
“Thirty years into the HIV epidemic, there is no vaccine in sight,” study first author Dr. Nitika Pant Pai, a clinical researcher at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Center in Montreal, said in a university news release. “Treatment as a prevention strategy has been known to work, but uptake of HIV screening seems to be limited by a societal problem: HIV stigma and perceived discrimination.”
Worldwide, 50 percent of people with HIV do not know they are infected, and about 2.5 million people become infected every year, according to UNAIDS, a United Nations program for reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Pant Pai and her colleagues urged policymakers around the world to consider providing people with the option of HIV self-testing.
“We have, as a society, made great progress with biomedical tools, drugs and strategies, but we haven’t conquered HIV-related stigma and perceived discrimination,” the researchers said. “The time is right to tailor strategies to suit the preferences and lifestyles of patients with a view to expand access.”
Article source: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_135507.html