Preventative steps are key when it comes to taking care of your health. Checking in with your body, with doctors, family, et cetera, can sometimes be the first step toward healing or possibly catching a potentially life-threatening disease in its early stages.
The future of HIV
Preventative steps are key when it comes to taking care of your health. Checking in with your body, with doctors, family, et cetera, can sometimes be the first step toward healing or possibly catching a potentially life-threatening disease in its early stages.
New research and development to combat the spread of HIV has been heavily reported on in the news this past year. HIV is a popular topic in the media and health communities—it’s been heavily researched for decades now, and while research has taken some pretty big steps, we still have a long way to go in finding a cure for HIV/AIDS.
Two recent studies have revealed that preventative treatments are the best way to curb the spread of HIV and AIDS. This new strategy stirring up the medical community is called “treatment as prevention.”
What this means is that individuals who are already HIV-positive are treated with antiretroviral drugs to “drive down the levels of virus in their systems so they no longer pose a threat of transmitting the disease,” said Till Barnighausen, a researcher involved in one of the studies.
Various published studies have shown that when HIV drugs are more widely available, the rate of new HIV infections drops. Barnighausen’s study found that when preventative measures are taken, “overall life expectancy increases by more than a decade.”
Oregon Public Broadcasting reported on these new research strategies, which are being applied to “17,000 HIV-positive South Africans for seven years in the province of KwaZulu-Natal.” The research results showed that if more than “30 percent of HIV-positive people are on powerful anti-HIV drugs, it cuts the risk of contracting the virus by about 38 percent, compared to when less than 10 percent of those infected have treatment.”
Rather than viewing this as “treatment as prevention,” Barnighausen views the program as “treatment for treatment, to save lives.”
While this is exciting news, it seems like, well, common sense. It’s obvious that if more people receive preventative treatment, the rate of infection is going to decrease, right? When people have access to proper, affordable and available health care, of course rates of infection/disease go down, while life expectancy and quality of living go up.
Right now the South African government is only providing the treatment to those who are the sickest, rather than everyone infected with HIV. While it’s understandable, given limited resources and medical aid, imagine how the statistics would change if everyone infected was able to receive treatment? We could conceivably take the same approach and apply it to every country, thus combatting the spread of HIV on an international scale.
The 19th International AIDS Conference was held last summer, and during the conference it was pretty much decided that the “treatment as prevention” approach was the most effective and one that should be capitalized on.
This is really great. And while I’m no medical expert, this is probably the most effective research that’s come out in recent years. The problem is making it available on a global level. This is just one more example that indicates we need to have readily accessible health care on a more universal scale. It needs to happen. Period.
Of course, that’s always easier said than done. Money is the highest contributing factor, which means that this is a real-world possibility that probably won’t happen in the near future.
That sucks.
But there’s really no way around it that will please everyone. It doesn’t and shouldn’t matter! This is health and well-being we’re talking about. Quality health care is something everyone should get. Taking the necessary steps to combat the spread of HIV will help everyone. Now and most definitely in the future.
It’s no secret that these changes won’t happen overnight. But if this research is any indication of the future of medical science, then we can assume it will probably only get better from here on out. If that’s the case, then we need to come together and fight for health care and medicine that will prevent the spread of HIV. The science and technology is there; all we need is the access.
