UN: AIDS-Related Deaths Fall 38% In East, Southern Africa

The number of AIDS-related deaths dropped 38 percent in Eastern and Southern Africa between 2005 and 2011, an enormous feat the UN attributes to increased availability of life-saving drugs and expanded awareness campaigns.

According to a July report released by UNAIDS, 800,000 people in the ?epicenter of the AIDS crisis? succumbed to the disease in 2011, down from 1.3 million in 2005. The heartening statistic coincides with the increase in the number of people in the region receiving antiretroviral therapy, but the UN says that this region still needs to ramp up its efforts on the innovation and human-rights fronts in order to usher in an AIDS-free generation.

Some of the most impressive gains in Eastern and Southern Africa have been in the areas of maternal and childhood health.

Between 2001 and 2001, the number of infants newly infected with HIV fell by half in the region.

Yet, treatment and prevention programs still remain alarmingly disappointing, according to UNAIDS. Just 33 percent of kids infected with HIV in the region received treatment in 2011.

In order to eliminate new infections among children and to keep mothers living with the disease alive, UNAIDS is implementing a four-pronged plan that will provide women with such fundamental basics as contraception, counseling and antiretroviral drugs to prevent transmission to their babies.

Though UNAIDS has made incredible leaps in keeping people alive in the region, the organization remains concerned about the oppressive stigma that still plagues those living with the disease.

One in five people in Ethiopia, for example, said they had been detained, quarantined or segregated because of their HIV status. Thirty percent of people surveyed living with HIV in Ethiopia and Kenya said that having HIV stood in the way of their securing employment.

What's Being Done

A number of on-the-ground local groups are playing a critical role in empowering HIV-infected women.

Project HOPE, for example -- a health program that?s stationed in 120 countries ? educates health professionals, brings medical supplies and treatment to women and children living with tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.

But once the group helps to provide medical care, it also aims to help women to lead independent and meaningful lives.

When Juliazarda Fransico Jemo learned that she was HIV positive only after her husband passed away, she got the medical care she needed, but had no means to generate income, Dr. John P. Howe, III, president and CEO of Project Hope, explained in a HuffPost blog. A group formed by his organization helped Jemo access small loans so that she could launch a business trading second-hand clothes and bedding. She?s now supporting herself and adopted and recently adopted an orphaned child she?s raising in her new home.

In addition to on-the-ground grassroots efforts, UNAIDS is calling for more anti-discrimination laws and increased awareness about human rights to help grant people living with HIV and AIDS the chance to lead fulfilling lives.

?The eyes of the world are on this region. The pace at which eastern and southern Africa embraces and acts on new science, evidence and innovations will determine how quickly we will reach the vision of zero new infections, zero AIDS-related deaths and zero discrimination,? Michael Sidibe, UNAIDS executive director, said in a statement. ?In the words of Nelson Mandela, ?when the water starts boiling it is foolish to turn off the heat.??

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Scientists say baby born with HIV apparently cured

WASHINGTON (AP) ? A baby born with the virus that causes AIDS appears to have been cured, scientists announced Sunday, describing the case of a child from Mississippi who's now 2? and has been off medication for about a year with no signs of infection.

There's no guarantee the child will remain healthy, although sophisticated testing uncovered just traces of the virus' genetic material still lingering. If so, it would mark only the world's second reported cure.

Specialists say Sunday's announcement, at a major AIDS meeting in Atlanta, offers promising clues for efforts to eliminate HIV infection in children, especially in AIDS-plagued African countries where too many babies are born with the virus.

"You could call this about as close to a cure, if not a cure, that we've seen," Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health, who is familiar with the findings, told The Associated Press.

A doctor gave this baby faster and stronger treatment than is usual, starting a three-drug infusion within 30 hours of birth. That was before tests confirmed the infant was infected and not just at risk from a mother whose HIV wasn't diagnosed until she was in labor.

"I just felt like this baby was at higher-than-normal risk, and deserved our best shot," Dr. Hannah Gay, a pediatric HIV specialist at the University of Mississippi, said in an interview.

That fast action apparently knocked out HIV in the baby's blood before it could form hideouts in the body. Those so-called reservoirs of dormant cells usually rapidly reinfect anyone who stops medication, said Dr. Deborah Persaud of Johns Hopkins Children's Center. She led the investigation that deemed the child "functionally cured," meaning in long-term remission even if all traces of the virus haven't been completely eradicated.

Next, Persaud's team is planning a study to try to prove that, with more aggressive treatment of other high-risk babies. "Maybe we'll be able to block this reservoir seeding," Persaud said.

No one should stop anti-AIDS drugs as a result of this case, Fauci cautioned.

But "it opens up a lot of doors" to research if other children can be helped, he said. "It makes perfect sense what happened."

Better than treatment is to prevent babies from being born with HIV in the first place.

About 300,000 children were born with HIV in 2011, mostly in poor countries where only about 60 percent of infected pregnant women get treatment that can keep them from passing the virus to their babies. In the U.S., such births are very rare because HIV testing and treatment long have been part of prenatal care.

"We can't promise to cure babies who are infected. We can promise to prevent the vast majority of transmissions if the moms are tested during every pregnancy," Gay stressed.

The only other person considered cured of the AIDS virus underwent a very different and risky kind of treatment ? a bone marrow transplant from a special donor, one of the rare people who is naturally resistant to HIV. Timothy Ray Brown of San Francisco has not needed HIV medications in the five years since that transplant.

The Mississippi case shows "there may be different cures for different populations of HIV-infected people," said Dr. Rowena Johnston of amFAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research. That group funded Persaud's team to explore possible cases of pediatric cures.

It also suggests that scientists should look back at other children who've been treated since shortly after birth, including some reports of possible cures in the late 1990s that were dismissed at the time, said Dr. Steven Deeks of the University of California, San Francisco, who also has seen the findings.

"This will likely inspire the field, make people more optimistic that this is possible," he said.

In the Mississippi case, the mother had had no prenatal care when she came to a rural emergency room in advanced labor. A rapid test detected HIV. In such cases, doctors typically give the newborn low-dose medication in hopes of preventing HIV from taking root. But the small hospital didn't have the proper liquid kind, and sent the infant to Gay's medical center. She gave the baby higher treatment-level doses.

The child responded well through age 18 months, when the family temporarily quit returning and stopped treatment, researchers said. When they returned several months later, remarkably, Gay's standard tests detected no virus in the child's blood.

Ten months after treatment stopped, a battery of super-sensitive tests at half a dozen laboratories found no sign of the virus' return. There were only some remnants of genetic material that don't appear able to replicate, Persaud said.

In Mississippi, Gay gives the child a check-up every few months: "I just check for the virus and keep praying that it stays gone."

The mother's HIV is being controlled with medication and she is "quite excited for her child," Gay added.

Associated Press

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