Eliminate HIV from the World?
posted: 20/02/2009
Getting rid of HIV from the world is a dream that is becoming more reasonable to have. It might sound like fantasy: HIV infection has no cure and no vaccine, after all.
Yet there is a way to completely wipe it out - at least in theory. What's more, it would take only existing medical technology to do the job.
This is the start of a long article, in the latest issue of the New Scientist , that looks at the issues, problems and solutions and how we could do it.
What would it take to rid S Africa of HIV?
The most interesting section is where they discuss how it could be done.
Researchers looked at the case for elimination in South Africa, which has the highest number of HIV cases in the world. They modelled what would happen if everyone over 15 were given annual tests, with all those who tested positive offered free antiretroviral treatment immediately, regardless of their CD4 count. They plugged in actual figures from a free treatment programme in Malawi, to take account of people who refuse treatment, or who stop because of side effects, or who change treatments because of resistance.
10 years action would see HIV start to disappear
The team found that within 10 years, the scheme would slash new HIV infections from the 1 in 50 people at present to less than 1 in 1000. Within 50 years, as people with HIV died (mainly from other causes), prevalence in the general population would fall from about 10 per cent to less than 1 per cent.
That all sounds great, but the cost of the scheme would initially be about $3.5 billion a year. That might sound prohibitive, but the key comparison to make is with the cost of alternative plans.
....
Or in the UK?
It might be easier to attempt universal treatment in a developed country. For example, the UK could, if it chose, afford to put every one of its estimated 73,000 HIV-positive residents on antiretroviral therapy. On the other hand with HIV only affecting 0.1 per cent of the UK population, so the universal testing this would need would be hard to justify.
read the full report
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