While people around the world remembered World AIDS Day yesterday, the disease is still shortening lives at an alarming rate in many countries. Of the 770,000 deaths caused by the HIV virus in 2018, almost two-thirds occurred in Africa and the Middle East. Infected people there have little access to medical treatment.
Challenges on World AIDS Day
Dr. Carlos del Rio told CNN's Michael Holmes on Wednesday that researchers face major challenges in their efforts to reduce the number of HIV infections and deaths caused by AIDS. He is director of clinical sciences and international research for the Center for AIDS Research at Emory University. Del Rio said researchers are faced not only with inadequate health systems, but also with a lack of a preventative vaccine or a cure for the disease.
“We need to strengthen health systems so that people living with HIV continue to receive appropriate medication,” del Rio said. According to UNAIDS, of the nearly 38 million people living with HIV worldwide - including 1.7 million children under 15 - only 24.5 million have access to treatment. People with the virus can have a combination oftake medication, which doctors call antiretroviral therapy, or ART. Importantly, this reduces the amount of virus in a person's body, allowing them to live a healthy life and reducing the likelihood that they will transmit HIV to others, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services.
Access to healthcare
So, taking ART regularly and keeping consistent medical appointments are key to maintaining health. However, many people living with HIV in Africa and the Middle East do not have regular access to it. UNAIDS also reports that only 32% of people in the Middle East and North Africa have access to treatment. Similarly, only 38% of people living with HIV in Central Asia and Eastern Europe access these life-saving treatments. However, in Western and Central Europe and North America, almost 80% of HIV-infected people have access to ART. This leads to an extremely low AIDS-related mortality rate compared to other regions of the world.
The need for a preventative vaccine
Although there are many HIV prevention methods on the market, scientists have not yet developed a safe and effective preventative vaccine. Del Rio told CNN that a vaccine will be a "critical tool" in preventing HIV transmission. The vaccine would be given to people without HIV to prevent them from becoming infected in the future. While there are no approved preventive vaccines on the market, there are therapeutic vaccines. Therapeutic HIV vaccines are given to people who are already infected with HIV, according to the National Institutes of Health. These are intended to strengthen their immune system's response to the infection that is already in the person's body.
