Stopping HIV/AIDS Locally and Globally

Scanning electron micrograph of HIV-1 budding from cultured lymphocyte. Image: CDC

From a neighborhood clinic offering free HIV screenings to radical prevention and treatment plans, the world focuses on HIV/AIDS

Local clinic honors World AIDS Day with free HIV tests 

The Family Tree Clinic in St. Paul, Minn., is offering free rapid HIV tests Mon. Dec. 1, in collaboration with World AIDS Day.  

The screening test looks for the presence of HIV antibodies. If antibodies are detected, a Western Blot test is used to confirm the results since general screenings give a false positive about 20 percent of the time.  

Barbara Peterson, a Family Tree clinician, said if an individual’s tests come back positive, the clinic will help the individual line up primary care, social workers, and insurance.  

HIV is a reportable disease, meaning it must be reported to the state health department. But it’s up to the person being tested whether they submit their information anonymously or confidentially. If people testing positive provide their previous partners' names, the health department can contact them for recommended screening. 

A slow yet steady increase in reported cases 

Last year, 325 new cases of HIV positive were reported in Minnesota, a 30 percent increase from 2002 and an 81 percent jump from 1997. An estimated 2,500 Minnesotans are believed to be living with HIV disease but do not know they are infected, according to the Minnesota Department of Health’s 2007 HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report.  

While Minnesota is considered a low risk region, worldwide, an estimated 33 million people are living with HIV. 

“Even though we’re in a low risk community, we want it to stay that way,” says Peterson.  

Maneesha Jain, Family Tree’s hotline coordinator, knows some people resist getting tested because they fear the result. What does she tell them? “It’s peace of mind. If you’re wanting to live in reality and take control of your life you can know and make decisions on that. If you know you have it you can monitor your health and the chance of living a high quality of life is much higher. People also need to think about the potential impact on others.” 

Jain said the clinic was able to offer free tests through the generosity of its testing kit supplier, which donated the kits.  

Family Tree Clinic provides birth control and sexual health testing and treatment services and information for men, women and adolescents.  

In Indonesia, proposed surveillance of  people with HIV an ‘act of desperation’ 

A bill in the Papua province of Indonesia to implant a microchip into HIV positive patients who are “sexually aggressive” to monitor their activities has met with strong resistance. The implication for human rights abuses the law could bring is clear. Such a law could also prove counter-productive to screening efforts.  

But the introduction of the bill underscores the desperation surrounding the HIV crisis in Papua. 

A proponent of the draft law, legislator John Manangsang, told the Jakarta Post that the microchips would only be implanted in people living with HIV/AIDS who were sexually aggressive.  

“Aggressive means actively seeking sexual intercourse. This is one way to protect healthy people,” he said.

“Do not misunderstand human rights; if we respect the rights of the people living with HIV/AIDS, then we must also respect the rights of healthy people.”  He said the draft bylaw also requires everyone to take HIV/AIDS tests so that preventative measures can be taken early on.  

“I am a doctor, saving lives is my profession. If we want to save the only limited number of Papuans, we have to take real action because 47 percent of (the country’s) HIV/AIDS (cases) are in Papua.” 

A virus has been sweeping the world for the past two decades, causing a disease which has killed millions of people and which looks likely to kill millions more. HIV stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus. After a period of time this virus damages the immune system, and this causes a variety of symptoms known as AIDS. This time period varies, depending on factors such as access to AIDS drugs, and possibly such factors as nutrition, the presence of other medical conditions, and stress. In the absence of treatment, the average time between HIV infection and progression to AIDS is around ten years. – from AVERT, an international AIDS charity

A bold plan for ending HIV/AIDS in Africa? 

If all adults in Africa were tested annually for HIV and every identified infected person received immediate treatment, it “could virtually end the AIDS epidemic in Africa in about a decade," according to a mathematical model published in the Lancet on Nov. 26. 

In the model, people in South Africa and Malawi were voluntarily tested annually and started on a regimen of antiretrovirals if their test results found them to be HIV-positive, even if they showed no symptoms. According to the model, HIV cases decreased by 95 percent within 10 years.  

The model was developed by AIDS treatment experts Reuben Granich, Charlie Gilks, Christopher Dye and colleagues at the World Health Organization. The researchers have faced much criticism from other experts and commentators after the model was published, but said they offered it as a basis for discussion and additional research. Kevin de Cock, HIV/Aids director at the WHO, and one of the authors, defended the model to the Guardian, saying that it “offers hope at a time when other avenues appear to have closed.”