Of the 33.4 million people living with AIDS in 2008, 15.7 million are women that can possibly transmit their disease to their future offspring. One of every three children born with HIV can die before even reaching their first birthday, and about a half of the anticipated 400,000 HIV positive infants per year can lost their lives before turning two. In average, 430,000 children under 15 years of age were contaminated in that same year, and 280,000 of them have died.
The loss of lives could have been smaller if medication was started in advance. This was partly because HIV treatment for children under the age of one was not offered in many settings. In the next days, though, health authorities are expanding its availability to provide diagnostic testing on infants four to six weeks old. In addition, they pledged to totally end mother-to-child transmission by giving all pregnant women with antiretroviral drugs which ought to protect against HIV transmission during pregnancy, delivery and or breastfeeding.
On the other hand, what everyone is looking forward to is finding the treatment that will eliminate the deadly virus from a human's system. Medical practitioners in medical scrubs like Dickies uniforms and medical scientist, patients, patients' loved ones, and all others want this life snatcher to end everlastingly. In the recent International AIDS Conference in Vienna, Geneva, it appears that scientists are again open to the notion of a cure. Sadly, not a very good amount of budget is available for research of HIV/AIDS Cure. Besides the problem on monetary fund, scientists in lab coats know that this will still go a long way.
At present, HIV/AIDS can only be controlled but not eradicated, because of being able to persist in diverse cells and physical locations. Even with intensified therapy, low levels of HIV viremia continue. On the other hand, a bone marrow transplant was singled out to have cured a man infected by human immunodefiency virus. It seems that the apparent cure was because the man's HIV was CCR5-tropic, entering target cells using CCR5 receptor. But the donor had a mutation that left his immune cells without receptor. In two years after transplant, the patient remains well and off antiretroviral drugs. It seems that any remaining virus in the patient are not replicating. Researchers will try to find out if the apparent cure can be duplicated therapeutically through gene transfer. With limited fund, though, HIV-stricken people will most likely wait long for dawn to come. And myriad more will face dismal loss.
The loss of lives could have been smaller if medication was started in advance. This was partly because HIV treatment for children under the age of one was not offered in many settings. In the next days, though, health authorities are expanding its availability to provide diagnostic testing on infants four to six weeks old. In addition, they pledged to totally end mother-to-child transmission by giving all pregnant women with antiretroviral drugs which ought to protect against HIV transmission during pregnancy, delivery and or breastfeeding.
On the other hand, what everyone is looking forward to is finding the treatment that will eliminate the deadly virus from a human's system. Medical practitioners in medical scrubs like Dickies uniforms and medical scientist, patients, patients' loved ones, and all others want this life snatcher to end everlastingly. In the recent International AIDS Conference in Vienna, Geneva, it appears that scientists are again open to the notion of a cure. Sadly, not a very good amount of budget is available for research of HIV/AIDS Cure. Besides the problem on monetary fund, scientists in lab coats know that this will still go a long way.
At present, HIV/AIDS can only be controlled but not eradicated, because of being able to persist in diverse cells and physical locations. Even with intensified therapy, low levels of HIV viremia continue. On the other hand, a bone marrow transplant was singled out to have cured a man infected by human immunodefiency virus. It seems that the apparent cure was because the man's HIV was CCR5-tropic, entering target cells using CCR5 receptor. But the donor had a mutation that left his immune cells without receptor. In two years after transplant, the patient remains well and off antiretroviral drugs. It seems that any remaining virus in the patient are not replicating. Researchers will try to find out if the apparent cure can be duplicated therapeutically through gene transfer. With limited fund, though, HIV-stricken people will most likely wait long for dawn to come. And myriad more will face dismal loss.