HIV/AIDS Community Gains Another Ally
Abstinence-Only Fails Mississippi
Study Examines Gender Differences in Immune Response to HIV
Last week, Positively Aware editor, Jeff Berry attended the International AIDS Society conference in Cape Town, South Africa. Be sure to check out his blog, including more photos he took during a trip to Khayelitsha to visit with an organization of grandmothers of AIDS orphans. Visit Jeff's blog
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HIV/AIDS Community Gains Another Ally
On July 14, on Advocate.com, Michelle Garcia reported on President Obama’s nomination of Dr. Regina Benjamin as U.S. Surgeon General. According to the report, Dr. Benjamin, a family practice physician from Alabama, revealed during her acceptance speech that she has personal familiarity with HIV issues due to the fact that her brother died at the age of 44 of an HIV-related condition.
Phil Curtis, of AIDS Project Los Angeles, told Advocate.com that having such a personal experience, especially a loss, due to HIV/AIDS could have a strong impact on her policy and public health campaigns and gives her the ability to reach out to underserved communities that are hard hit by the epidemic.
"We all know that the numbers have increased, especially in more marginalized communities, and communities of color," he said. "The infection rates in young African-American gay men are out of the ballpark -- it's stratospheric, and tragic. So prevention messages are something that Dr. Benjamin will have the opportunity to spread throughout the country."
In a related opinion piece in the Minneapolis Star Tribune Lorraine Teel, executive director of the Minnesota AIDS Project, writes, "Let's hope that this Surgeon General's administration sounds the alarm, loud and clear, about HIV. A major factor in why we are not winning the battle against AIDS is because we have been forced to only politely talk about risk"
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Abstinence-Only Fails Mississippi
In the July 22 Kaiser Family Foundation HIV/AIDS Report, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger reported findings from the CDC’s latest Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. “Mississippi is among the top states in the nation in the spread of HIV and AIDS among pre-teens to young adults, as well as pregnancies in the same age groups," according to the CDC. The report found that the rate of young adults age 20 to 24 living with HIV/AIDS was 33.9 cases per 100,000 people, the eighth highest rate in the nation for this age group. Mary Currier, the state epidemiologist, said the findings indicate that the state's abstinence-only approach to sex education is ineffective. According to the Clarion-Ledger, "Earlier this year, an attempt to establish a pilot sex-education program in a limited number of schools passed the Mississippi House but died in the Senate without a vote. The bill would have required the program to report its successes or failures in a 2012 report to the Legislature." State Rep. Alyce Clarke (D), who authored the bill, said she will try again to get the bill passed.
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On July 10, a directive was issued from the House Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies favoring removal of the language that bans funding for syringe exchange programs (SEPs), and the Appropriations Committee defeated an amendment that would have reinstated the ban language. The Congress will now have the freedom to establish public health policy based on evidence that has indicated for many years that SEPs are effective in reducing the spread of HIV, do not increase drug use or drug-related crime, and are extremely important avenues to drug addiction treatment and other health services. Furthermore, SEPs take used syringes off the streets and help protect law enforcement, emergency personnel, and even the public from dangerous injuries.
Maureen Trotter, a pathologist and president of the Taylor-Jones-Haskell County Medical Society, writes in the Abilene Reporter News, “Needle exchange programs (NEPs) are an inexpensive public health intervention. The cost of preventing one case of HIV is estimated between $4,000 and $12,000 via NEPs. The medical cost of treating a person infected with HIV is about $200,000."
In his post on The Huffington Post on July 20, Kevin Robert Frost, CEO of amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research, says, “With more flexibility to use federal funds for evidence-based programs, including SEPs, local governments and agencies will be better equipped to combat HIV transmission in their communities.” He adds, “We hope, too, that an amendment to the House bill that would dictate to local officials that federal funds cannot be used for SEPs within 1,000 feet of an educational institution, park, playground, or youth center, in addition to other places, will not be included in the final bill sent to the President Barack Obama. Any such restrictions could severely hamper efforts to implement successful SEPs, particularly in urban areas.”
President Obama has backed removal of the ban on syringe exchange funding. Gil Kerlikowske, the new “Drug Czar,” has also spoken out about the evidence of the efficacy of SEPs.
According to Frost, “Our approach to combating HIV/AIDS has been hampered for too long by policy based on ideology instead of evidence. For the first time in more than 20 years, Congress has taken a crucial step in recognizing the strengths of evidence-based policy in the syringe exchange debate and has shown that it has finally gotten serious about ending the AIDS epidemic through proven methods of prevention.”
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Study Examines Gender Differences in Immune Response to HIV
In the July 14 Daily HIV/AIDS Report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, a report from
HealthDay/Greenville Daily Reflector cited new research showing that "a receptor molecule involved in the recognition of HIV-1 responds to the virus differently in women than in men." During the early stages of infection, women often have a stronger immune response to HIV, but then end up progressing to AIDS more quickly than men with similar viral loads. Study authors noted that this difference in immune system response “then leads to differences in chronic T-cell activation, a known activator of disease progression.”
Researcher Marcus Altfeld said the findings raise new questions about how sex hormones affect HIV in the body.
The study was conducted by researchers at the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. Results will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Nature Medicine.
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