HIV ceases to be killer disease

The dreaded Human Immune Virus (HIV) which has wreaked havoc in the last three decades across the globe may lastly be on its way out as a killer disease. Scientists researching into a treat have announced that if an HIV-positive person immediately starts suitable treatment of anti-retroviral drugs, the risk of transmitting the virus to an uninfected sexual partner is nearly totally eliminated. That is dramatic and welcome news to the entire world because the disease had puzzled the scientific and medical communities as incurable. The international trial, conduct by the HIV avoidance Trials Network, tracked more than 1,700 couples across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the United States and found that the risk of illness fell by 96 per cent.

A statement from the UN Information Centre in Accra last Friday said the reduction in risk was so big that the trial was stopped some three to four years ahead of schedule. "This breakthrough is a serious game changer," said Michel Sidibe, the Executive Director of the Joint UN Programmers on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). "Now we require making sure that couples have the option to choose treatment for prevention and have access to it," he explained. Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization, (WHO) explained the results of the study as "a crucial development, because we well know that sexual transmission accounts for about 80 per cent of all new infections".

UNAIDS said it would convene a meeting with other key association tackling the scourge of AIDS to discuss the trial and its implications for the reply to the disease. In July, WHO is also releasing new guidance to assist HIV-positive people to keep their partners. The two agencies stressed the need for couples to make proof-based decisions on which combination of HIV prevention options was best for them, and that anti-retroviral therapy supply as one of the options made available. "No single method is entirely protective against HIV," the agencies said in a joint press statement. "Treatment for prevention wants to be used in combination with other HIV prevention options.