In the past, we had reports about an insurance company that was using a computer program to search the applications of anyone recently diagnosed with HIV, looking for any excuse to cancel their coverage. Now, that practice is gone for good.

In the years to come, the Affordable Care Act will expand Medicaid so that it will be available to many more Americans with HIV/AIDS, including adults without children. As a result, many people living with HIV will no longer have to wait for an AIDS diagnosis to become eligible for Medicaid. And the law is investing in community health centers, and increasing access to testing, treatment, and care -- especially in underserved areas.

What these reforms mean is that far more Americans with HIV/AIDS will be able to get coverage they can count on through Medicaid or the private insurance market. But we have also begun to see another change taking place thanks to the health care law. And that is a new focus on the quality of care people receive once they’re covered.

That starts by making prevention a priority. The law helps eliminate barriers to HIV testing by requiring most private plans to cover HIV testing for women and individuals at high risk at no cost to the patient out-of pocket. They are also now required to cover with no co-pay many other recommended services, like flu shots or mammograms, that will help people living with HIV stay healthy.

In addition, the health care law provides long overdue relief from prescription drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries. Beneficiaries with HIV/AIDS often quickly hit the prescription drug coverage gap known as the donut hole. Now, when they do, they get a 50 percent discount on their brand-name drugs. And if the AIDS Drug Assistance Program covers their medicines, those payments will count toward moving beneficiaries through the donut hole -- so they don’t get stuck there.

Finally, the Affordable Care Act has made a series of investments to help providers support patients with chronic diseases like HIV/AIDS.

For example, under the law, states can receive extra federal funding -- an enhanced 90% federal match in the first two years -- to support coordinated care through “health homes” for Medicaid beneficiaries with chronic health needs. The goal of a Health Home is to treat the whole person, coordinating all their care from primary and acute care to behavioral health and long-term services.

With our guidance, New York and Oregon have already established health homes specifically to serve individuals living with HIV/AIDS. And we continue to work with other states on their proposals. Today, I am proud to announce that we will be issuing a rule to explicitly include HIV/AIDS on the list of chronic conditions that every state may target in designing effective Health Homes. This will help more states adopt the kind of innovations that we know can improve the care and health of people living with HIV/AIDS.

These are all big steps forward. But we will continue to need the Ryan White program to fill in the gaps of our health insurance system. And we will keep reaching out to providers and community leaders on the frontlines to make sure those programs remain strong.

When President Obama took office four years ago, our nation’s fight against HIV/AIDS had nearly stalled. The number of new infections had plateaued while the general public’s concern about the disease continued to fade.

But we are here today because we refused to accept those trends. Over the last four years, we looked closely at how and where we were using our resources. And together, we made a commitment to help the best approaches reach those most in need.

Out of that collaboration came a powerful national strategy. And today, it provides a roadmap for the months and years ahead. But in order to achieve these goals we will need your continued leadership.

So today, I want to ask you to keep your foot on the accelerator. If we are going to reach our ultimate goal of an AIDS-free generation, we must all challenge ourselves to do more. We need your expertise, your best practices, and your collaboration to make the most of the Affordable Care Act and to realize the goals of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy.

Together, we can raise awareness to new heights and make our programs even more effective. We can push the boundaries of science even further. And we can help even more people get the support, treatment, and care they need to live long and healthy lives.

Health officials tell Greece to act fast to control HIV

 A spiraling outbreak of HIV in debt-stricken Greece could run out of control unless urgent action is taken, European health officials said on Friday.

 

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said infections with the AIDS-causing virus among drug users and other high-risk groups were rising fast, and that a failure to act would mean far higher costs in future.

 

ECDC director Marc Sprenger was in Athens on Friday visiting hospitals and needle exchanges. He said he would tell officials that free syringes and methadone programs must be stepped up, and testing and treatment for the human immunodeficiency virus made available to all.

 

"Immediate concerted action is needed in order to curb and eventually stop the current outbreak," he told Reuters as the ECDC published a report on Greece's HIV problem.

 

Since 2009, recession in Greece has reduced economic output by a fifth and sent unemployment to a record high.

 

The healthcare system is under extreme pressure, making it harder for the poor, unemployed or homeless to get treatment.

 

The ECDC said it was unclear how much Greece's debt crisis is contributing to the HIV outbreak, but it was evidently having "a significant social and health impact". There were fears in Athens that "HIV treatment services have reached a ceiling" because of a leap in case numbers in 2012.

 

While Greece has only 7.4 HIV infections per 100,000 people, compared to 10 per 100,000 in Britain or 27.3 in Estonia, rates have soared since 2011 in high-risk groups such as drug users.

 

From 2007 to 2010, there were only 10 to 15 cases a year of HIV infection in injecting drug users.

 

But during 2011, there were 256 such cases - or 27 percent of the total. Another 314 drug use HIV cases were reported between January and August 2012, bringing the total HIV cases for the year to August to 768.

 

Combination drugs can give patients with HIV near-normal life expectancy, but the drugs must be taken for life, and cost 10,000 to 22,000 euros ($13,000 to $28,500) a year.

 

"If a scale-up (in prevention and testing) is not achieved, it's likely that HIV transmission among people who inject drugs in Athens will continue and even accelerate - and could eventually spread," Sprenger said.

 

"The cost of prevention ... will be significantly less than the provision of treatment to those who become infected."

 

The ECDC said waiting times for methadone programs in Athens were more than seven years in August 2010, and only around seven syringes a year were given to each drug user.

 

Efforts by authorities to address this have now brought waiting lists down below four years and increased the number of syringes to 15 a year in 2011 and an expected 45 in 2012, but this is well below the international standard of 200 needles.

 

Rates of other health problems such as depression and suicide have been rising in Greece, which is also battling the re-emergence of mosquito-borne diseases such West Nile Virus and malaria.

Kenya village of AIDS orphans hangs hopes on trees

 There are no middle-aged adults in the Kenyan village of Nyumbani. They all died years ago. Only the young and old live here.

The 938 children here all saw their parents die. The 97 grandparents saw their middle-aged children die. But put together, the bookend generations take care of one another.

UNAIDS says that as of 2011 an estimated 23.5 million people living with HIV resided in sub-Saharan Africa, representing 69 percent of the global HIV burden. Eastern and southern Africa are the hardest-hit regions.

Saturday is World AIDS Day.

Nyumbani is currently planting tens of thousands of trees for the fourth straight year in the hopes that the village will soon harvest the hardwood and become self-sustaining.

The Beginning of The End of Aids

 

After 30 years and 30 million deaths, “the beginning of the end of AIDS” may be on the horizon, due amazing scientific breakthroughs, according to a new scientific paper in New England Journal of Medicine. “We are at a moment of extraordinary optimism in the response to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV),” the researchers wrote.

Fueling hope that devastating epidemic affecting 34 million people around the world will be eradicated during our lifetime are such developments as proven treatments to reduce the risk of sexual transmission by 96 percent, a potentially effective HIV vaccine (still in the study phase), FDA-approval of the first HIV prevention drug (Truvada) this year, and evidence of the first person cured of AIDS (Timothy Brown, also known as “the Berlin patient.”).

An AIDS-Free Generation is “Within Our Reach”

“We stand at a tipping point in the fight against HIV/AIDS, and working together, we can realize our historic opportunity to bring that fight to an end," President Obama said in a proclamation to mark World AIDS Day on December 1. The U.S. government has unveiled an ambitious global “blueprint” to help even the hardest-hit countries turn the tide on the epidemic.

"An AIDS-free generation is not just a rallying cry — it is a goal that is within our reach,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated in the blueprint. New infections in 25 low-and middle-income countries have dropped by 50 percent in recent years—with the steepest decline in children, showing remarkable progress towards an AIDS-free generation, notes Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

The Famous Faces of HIV and Aids

When Will We See the Beginning of the End of AIDS?

Every year, 2.5 million new HIV infections occur globally. Yet only 1.4 million of these people are treated with antiviral drugs that could not only save their lives, but also dramatically reduce the danger that they will spread the disease to others, according to a new report from ONE, a global relief organization that fights extreme poverty and preventable disease.

And in the US, one-third of those diagnosed with HIV aren’t getting any treatment, because they can’t afford it, PBS reports. Given these grim statistics, how close are we to seeing “the beginning of the end of AIDS,” which ONE defines as reaching a point when the annual number of new infections each year is finally surpassed by the number of HIV patients newly added to treatment annually. Based on current rates of progress, we’ll hit that milestone in 2022, the report predicts.

However, by working harder to bring the highly effective therapies that can turn HIV/AID into a chronic disease, not a death sentence, to people who need them, the beginning of the end of the epidemic could occur as early as 2015. That would require treating an additional 140,000 people a year and doubling progress on preventing new infections—a potentially achievable goal, says Erin Hohlfelder, policy director, global health of ONE.

The Changing Face of HIV and Aids

Early HIV Treatment Virtually Erases Risk of Transmission

Among the most important advances in prevention and treatment are:

•The discovery that early treatment of HIV/AIDS infection with antiviral drugs is also an amazingly effective form of prevention, cutting risk for sexual transmission in heterosexual couples by 96 percent.

•FDA-approval of Truvada, the first drug for prevention of HIV infection. In a study of about 4,700 heterosexual couples in which one partner was HIV-positive, the one-pill combination therapy cut transmission risk by 75 percent. Truvada is approved for patients who are HIV-negative, at high risk for infection, and may have sex partners who are HIV-positive.

•Male circumcision is another effective prevention method that lowers the threat of spreading the virus by up to 60 percent. When Hohlfelder recently visited a clinic offering the procedure in sub-Saharan Africa, “there was a long line of men ages 12 to 65 to get circumcised because they’ve learned how effective this procedure is for prevention.”

•Virtual elimination of mother-baby transmission can be achieved with existing treatment methods—with studies reporting success rates of more than 95 percent.

An Inspiring Success Story

“Over the past decade, there has been amazing progress in increased access to treatment.” says Hohlfelder. “In 2002, only about 300,000 people with the virus were being treated, compared to 8 million today.” One of them is Motselisi Thaisi, who was born to an HIV-infected mom in Zambia. The little girl nearly died when she was 11 months old.

After getting antiviral treatment at a clinic supported by the Global Fund, Motelisi had a dramatic turnaround in just 90 days—and is now a healthy five-year-old, reports Hohlfelder. “What’s also wonderful is that Motelisi now has a baby brother, who is HIV-negative because the kids’ mom has been treated,” an inspiring example of the potential of current treatments to help achieve the vision of an AIDS-free generation of kids, if access to treatment was expanded.

 HIV can be transmitted through kissing.

MYTH. The HIV virus is transmitted through blood, seminal, and vaginal fluids—not saliva. There have been no reported cases of HIV infection from kissing or sharing food or a beverage with someone with HIV or AIDS. However, any kind of sore, even bleeding in the gums, does bring blood into the equation, which increases the risk of infection.

Mosquitoes can transmit HIV.

MYTH. While mosquitoes can carry diseases like malaria, the very nature of how they extract blood from humans make it impossible to transmit HIV from one person to another. This was once considered a fact, but extensive research has found that mosquitoes only exchange saliva with their host (i.e. you), and the insect saliva is incapable of transmitting the virus.

You can only be tested at the doc's office.


MYTH. While your doctor can take a simple blood sample to test for HIV and other diseases, there are numerous different testing options besides a doctor’s appointment. Many major cities have mobile units that offer free testing. In 2012, a home testing system called OraQuick hit the market. It uses a swab from inside the mouth and provides results in 20 minutes.

You can contract HIV through a blood transfusion.

While this is a FACT, nearly all cases of HIV infection due to blood transfusions came before March of 1985. This is when proper testing became available to screen donated blood for HIV antibodies. Since then, all blood donated in the United States and other developed countries is rigorously tested for HIV and other blood pathogens. The likelihood of contracting HIV through a blood transfusion in the United States makes this nearly a MYTH.

There is no cure for HIV or AIDS.

 

While this is an unfortunate FACT for now, recent research and treatments have shown promise this may soon be a MYTH.

One patient, Timothy Ray Brown—dubbed “The Berlin Patient”—received a blood stem cell transplant at the Charite Hospital in Berlin, Germany to treat his newly-diagnosed leukemia and HIV, which he had for 10 years. Since 2010, Brown has been declared cancer- and HIV-free.