Treatment Booklet Updated

posted: 18/03/2010

The latest issue of NAM’s booklet, anti-HIV drugs, is just out. It tells you about each of the drugs currently licensed for HIV treatment in the UK.
 

All the booklets in this series are free to people living with HIV in the UK, or can be ordered through the aidsmap online bookshop for £1.

You can read it online, or download the booklet as a pdf.

Colour HIV drugs chart - new edition

The new edition of their full colour HIV drugs chart (February 2010 edition) is also now available to download as a pdf.

Clinics and HIV support groups
If you work in a clinic or support group in the UK, you can order these booklets for free for your clients and patients. Get in touch with Rose for details on 020 7840 0060 or by emailing her.

For the experts - HIV Treatment Directory
The new edition of the HIV Treatments Directory (28th edition) is also now available.
 

A complete reference guide to HIV treatment and medical aspects of HIV, with A to Z listings and an intuitive layout. Comprehensive information, and details of published research covering topics including:
• starting and changing treatment
• A to Z of antiretroviral drugs
• women's health issues
• drug resistance
• drug interactions and pharmacokinetics
• HIV and genetics
• side-effects
• the immune system and HIV
• prevention of mother-to-child transmission
Plus a full-colour drug chart and CD-ROM.
 

To order your copy, please visit NAM's webshop 
 

People's price

It costs professionals a few pence under £65 but people with HIV can buy it for £12.95 – it’s free but this is the cost of special delivery for this large, heavy book.

The Treatments Directory is excellent but has much more information than most people with HIV want. George House Trust has a copy you can use in our reception area.

Test and Treat to End HIV in 40 Years

posted: 22/02/2010

A global public health strategy for testing and treating everyone with HIV is now being considered.
Health officials are considering a radical shift in the strategy against HIV that would see everyone tested for the virus and people with HIV then put on a lifetime course of drugs. The strategy, which would involve testing most of the world's population for HIV, aims to reduce the transmission so much that HIV would die out completely over the next 40 years.
 

Brian Williams, professor of epidemiology at the South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis in Stellenbosch, said that HIV transmission could be stopped within five years with the use of antiretroviral drugs (ARVs). "The epidemic of HIV is really one of the worst plagues of human history," Williams told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in San Diego. "I hope we can get to the starting line in one to two years and get complete coverage of patients in five years. Maybe that's being optimistic, but we're facing Armageddon."
 

Two years of trials now
Major trials of this universal test and treat strategy are planned in Africa and the USA and will affect whether this becomes part of global public health policy in the next two years.
More than 30 million people are infected with HIV globally and two million die of the disease each year. But across the globe only 12% of those living with HIV get the treatment they need. The disease is overwhelmingly prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa, which accounts for a quarter of all HIV cases globally. Half of these are in South Africa.
 

Broadly the epidemic calculations are that a person with HIV may pass on HIV to between five to 10 others in their time with HIV. Treating people within a year of becoming infected can reduce transmission tenfold, enough to cause the HIV epidemic to die out.
 

Trials plans
In the trials, people will be offered HIV tests once a year, either as routine when they visit their GP, or through mobile clinics in more remote regions. Those testing positive will be put on a lifetime course of ARVs.
"Over the past 25 years we have saved the lives of probably two to three million people using antiretroviral drugs, but almost nothing we have done has had any impact on transmission of the disease," Williams said. "We have stopped people dying but we haven't stopped the epidemic."
If patients take ARVs when they should, the amount of virus in their bodies should fall so low that it becomes undetectable, and they are then extremely unlikely to pass the virus on.

Five years to see the results but worth the price
"The question is, can we use these drugs not only to keep people alive, but also to stop transmission and I believe that we can. We could effectively stop transmission of HIV in five years." Scientists estimate that the cost of implementing the strategy in South Africa alone will be $3bn-$4bn a year. The world currently spends $30bn (£19.4bn) a year on HIV research and treatment, a figure that some experts believe will double over the next decade.
 

Sub-Saharan Africa has seen a dramatic rise in cases of tuberculosis among HIV patients, who are also susceptible to other infections because their immune systems are weakened.
"If you factor in all of the costs, in my opinion, doing this would be cost saving from day one, because the cost of the drugs would be more than balanced by the cost of treating people for all of these other diseases and then letting them die," Williams said. "We're killing probably half a million young adults every year in the prime of their life just at the point where they should be contributing to society and the cost of that to society is enormous," he added. "The only thing that's more expensive than doing this is not doing this."
 

HIV patients in southern Africa are more likely to take ARVs when they should than people living in developed countries, according to health officials. The finding gives doctors hope that the blanket administering of drugs might suppress the virus enough that it dies out naturally.

George House Trust comment 

This assumes a great deal. We are still a long way from providing treatment to all the millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa who need it. This strategy would require us to deliver HIV treatment for vastly more people, reliably, day after day, for decades.

The computer prediction of the epidemic will be correct as long as every African does get tested for HIV every year, everyone who tests positive then starts taking antiretrovirals immediately and 98 out of 100 do not miss a dose. How would people in the UK respond if outsiders decided all adults in the UK must have a HIV test every year?

We know gay men in rich countries use condoms far less now than before effective treatment became available in the mid 1990s, but somehow it's assumed heterosexuals in Africa won't also use condoms less.  

Source

 

HIV and Children Booklet

posted: 03/02/2010

HIV & Children, NAM’s easy to read booklet is now updated and freshly available. It tells you all about HIV treatment and care for HIV-positive children.
 

Like all NAM's booklets it’s free to people with HIV

Or read them online 

or download the booklets as PDFs from them direct 
 

Get Health Insurance for Isle of Man or Channel Islands

posted: 26/01/2010

Anyone travelling to either the Channel Islands or Isle of Man, especially people with HIV, should get health insurance. The UK government cancelled the deal with the Channel Islands in April last year which allowed UK people to use the health service on the Islands free. From April 1st this year the deal is cancelled for people going to the Isle of Man.
 

EU health travel cards won't help

EU travel cards won’t work in the islands either, which are not part of the UK, nor part of the EU.
 

Anyone needing health care will either have to have health insurance or have to pay the full cost. The only treatment you will be able to have without insurance is at an Island hospital Accident and Emergency department but this will not include hospital admission to a ward.
 

Travel Insurance for people with HIV - links and click through to Next page for more

Source 
 

 

Keep Free Prescription Promise

posted: 21/01/2010

UPDATED 26 January - further information

Gordon Brown promised at the labour party conference in 2008 to end prescription charges for people with long term conditions like HIV. Over a year later people are still paying. Now the Prescription Charges Coalition of 20 charities has called on Gordon Brown to keep his promise.
 

‘Prescription charges are a deeply unfair burden on people with long-term conditions — those who need medicines the most for day-to-day quality of life', they say in their letter. ‘Patients should not be prevented by an NHS charge from accessing treatment to improve their quality of life.'
 

Time is short because of coming election

The charities said they hoped that the government would be able to find a way to implement this policy as soon as possible. Time is short – new regulations need to be tabled within the next month or the general election will shut the door to reform.
 

Join the campaign and email your MP

Email your MP here and back the campaign – it’s easy to help.

first source 
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