Geisha Kow­lessar

At the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi, Miller School of Med­i­cine doc­tors and re­searchers are vig­or­ous­ly work­ing to come up with new and ef­fi­cient meth­ods to erad­i­cate the HIV virus. At a press con­fer­ence for in­ter­na­tion­al jour­nal­ists at the uni­ver­si­ty yes­ter­day, Dr Al­lan Ro­driguez said while tremen­dous ef­fort is be­ing made to rev­o­lu­tionise HIV/Aids med­ica­tion to make it more ef­fec­tive, find­ing a vac­cine is still in the dis­tant fu­ture. He said it could take as much as ten to 15 years be­fore a vac­cine is de­vel­oped.

"We have had sev­er­al phas­es re­gard­ing test­ing but we are ul­ti­mate­ly work­ing to­wards a cure," Ro­driguez added. While there is no avail­able vac­cine to­day, there is im­proved med­ica­tion which has pro­longed the lives of many peo­ple liv­ing with HIV, said Dr Mario Steven­son, who is in charge of re­search overview. Ten years ago, Steven­son said, the epi­dem­ic raged through­out the Unit­ed States and the world killing mil­lions.

"The war on HIV has been an in­cred­i­ble suc­cess sto­ry com­pared to ten years ago but it does not mean we are com­pla­cent. The prob­lem is many peo­ple do not have ac­cess to ant-retro­vi­ral drugs," he said. Steven­son said it was ur­gent that the most vul­ner­a­ble be tar­get­ed which would in­clude the coun­ty of Mi­a­mi which was de­scribed at the epi­cen­tre of the dis­ease. Keep­ing peo­ple on the med­ica­tion re­mained a huge prob­lem, he added.

He said while at the be­gin­ning some may be ea­ger to take treat­ment, along the way they stop. "There are tremen­dous dis­par­i­ties in keep­ing peo­ple in care and that makes it a re­al chal­lenge," he said. "Once treat­ment is missed for even five days, the virus comes back im­me­di­ate­ly...We have var­i­ous re­search pro­grammes and our mis­sion is to pro­vide a mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary ap­proach," Steven­son added.

Among the most af­fect­ed in Mi­a­mi is the area of South Beach which has a high MSM (men hav­ing sex with men) pop­u­la­tion and Mi­a­mi-Dade which has a large His­pan­ic pop­u­la­tion. Gwen­dolyn Scott who does pe­di­atric and ado­les­cent work with the uni­ver­si­ty said there has been a de­crease in moth­er to child trans­mis­sion of the virus be­cause more women are ac­cess­ing ear­li­er treat­ment which pre­vent­ed ba­bies from be­ing in­fect­ed.

Scott is a spokesman for the Test Mi­a­mi cam­paign launched three years ago as a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort be­tween the Mi­a­mi-Dade Coun­ty Health De­part­ment and Flori­da De­part­ment of Health. Its ob­jec­tives in­clude:

• Rou­tine HIV test­ing;

• Im­prove Mi­a­mi-Dade res­i­dents' un­der­stand­ing of HIV; and

• re­duce trans­mis­sion of HIV.

"Test­ing for HIV/Aids is a brave thing to do. If we care about our­selves and the peo­ple we love, get test­ed, get treat­ment. Ig­no­rance kills," Scott urged. At a me­dia train­ing ses­sion last week, So­nia Ras­to­gi, ad­vo­ca­cy co-co­or­di­na­tor of the US Pos­i­tive Women's Net­work (US­P­WN), said 64 per cent of women liv­ing with HIV in the US re­ceiv­ing med­ical care have an­nu­al in­comes un­der $10,000, com­pared to 41 per cent of men.

The net­work's na­tion­al mem­ber­ship is a body of women liv­ing with HIV in­clud­ing trans-gen­der women. "It al­so in­cludes al­lies that ex­ists to strength­en the strate­gic pow­er of all women liv­ing with HIV with­in the US," Ras­to­gi added.