Estimated worldwide HIV infections: 48 713 342 at 11.28am on Thursday September 26
Cheaper to treat HIV/Aids: Three million Aids deaths can be averted and more than 2,5-million HIV infections prevented by 2015 through the implementation of voluntary counselling and testing, mother-to-child transmission prevention, improved management of sexually transmitted infections and highly active anti-retroviral therapy, according to a study by the Centre for Actuarial Research. The study says the cost of highly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART) for adults will gradually increase from R224-million this year to a peak of R18,1-billion in 2015. ”With a realistic price reduction in anti-retroviral medicines to R300 a month for a first-line regimen and R450 a month for a second-line regimen, the cost of adult HAART can be reduced to R14,1-billion in 2015.”
More money: The South African Aids Vaccine Initiative has announced that the development of three potential HIV vaccines designed in South Africa would receive multimillion-rand support, after showing promise in laboratory testing. These vaccines will soon enter the manufacturing process and safety testing that precedes human clinical trials. The three candidate HIV vaccine products incorporate the genetic sequences of South African strains of HIV (subtype C). It is hoped they will prove safe and induce immune responses, and eventually show some protective properties in humans.
Sources: The South African Vaccine Initiative and the Treatment Action Campaign
Estimated worldwide HIV infections: 48612664 as at 11.40am on Thursday, September 19 2002
Skyrocketing: HIV and Aids infection rates in much of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, with young people comprising the majority of new cases, the United Nations Children’s Fund warned in a report released on Wednesday. Nearly 80% of newly registered infections from 1997 to 2000 in the Commonwealth of Independent States, the grouping of former Soviet republics, occurred among people under the age of 29. Unicef found that less than 70% of teenagers in Belarus, Ukraine and Latvia knew that condoms offered protection against HIV, while 97% of French teens and 87% of German teens were aware of that.
HIV-positive muppet: Moshe, Zikwe, Zuzu and Neno will be back on television and radio for the second season of Takalani Sesame with a new friend, Kami, a muppet living with HIV. The programme is targeted at the seven out of eight young children who have little or no exposure to formal early childhood development programmes. Speaking at the launch, Minister of Education Kader Asmal said South Africa was the first country in the Sesame Street family to introduce a radio component. Another first concerned the muppet living with HIV. ”For us it is our responsibility as a nation, as a government, and more specifically as partners with the education sector, to respond to the needs of many of our children who are infected and affected by HIV and Aids,” Asmal said.
Source: www.redribbon.co.za
Estimated worldwide HIV infections: 48 510 625 as at 10am on Thursday, September 12
Taking a dive: The number of Aids cases reported in the European Union in 2001, down 11% from the previous year, but infection through heterosexual contact is on the rise, the European Commission warned on Tuesday.
A total of 8210 new cases of Aids were reported in the 15-nation bloc last year, the commission’s statistical office Eurostat said, adding that the total number of Aids victims in the European Union stood at 235 513.
The figures are in contrast to 1994 when a record 24 886 new Aids cases were registered across the European Union.
Drug users represented 39,4 % of new Aids cases while 32,6% were infected through homo/bisexual male contacts and 17,6% through heterosexual contacts.
Eurostat said the proportion of cases from homo/bisexual male contact which exceeded 60% in the first years of the epidemic, fell to 19,6% in 2001. But Aids cases due to heterosexual transmission grew steadily from 8,9% in 1985 to 36,5% in 2001.
Kill the worm: An Israeli, Ethiopian, American and Swedish team of researchers has reported new evidence that treating intestinal worms can lead to a reduction in HIV viral load. The Israeli group, led by Professor Zwi Bentwich at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, had previously reported similar findings based on treatment given to HIV-positive Ethiopian migrants to Israel. This new evidence is stronger.
Source: www.aidsmap.com, www.redribbon.co.za
Estimated worldwide HIV infections: 48 411 523 at 12.33pm on Thursday, September 5
A breakthrough this decade? This is the decade in which the world’s scientists will find a cure for Aids, said Stephen Fuller, a professor with the School of Clinical Medicine at Oxford University.
Fuller said he had no doubt that a breakthrough in the treatment of Aids would be found, given that thousands of scientists worldwide were probing the HI virus and also searching for a vaccine.
He said the tragedy of the onset of Aids in the past decades had been accompanied by a flowering of new technical advances and techniques in light and electron microscopy for the study of the virus.
He said that the understanding by the scientific community of the virus had profited from the use of recent methods in light microscopy.
A second strain: Swiss researchers have documented a rare case of a patient contracting a second HIV infection years later with a different strain of the virus.
Doctors once assumed that patients’ natural immunity would keep them from getting the virus more than once. But in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine researchers describe the case of a 38-year-old man who acquired a second strain through unprotected sex more than two years after he was first infected in 1998.
The researchers said the case could have implications for the development of an Aids vaccine and supports the practice of safe sex even among HIV-infected partners.
Source: www.redribbon.co.za, Sapa