Word: hiv
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Hoping to sharply cut HIV/AIDS transmission rates in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) took the unusual step of recommending that doctors ask all patients from ages 13 to 64 whether they want to be tested for the virus. One in four Americans living with HIV don't know they are infected; for them, early diagnosis could mean early treatment and longer lives. Antiretroviral drug therapy has already saved nearly 3 million years of life in the U.S. alone. Meanwhile, the number of people living with HIV/AIDS around the world continues to grow, to 40 million...
Leave it to a child to get to the heart of the matter. For years, giving antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) to children living with AIDS in the poorest parts of the world was perceived as a lost cause. It's hard enough, the experts thought, to get ARVs to pregnant, HIV-positive women to reduce the chances they will infect their babies in utero or at birth. Pediatric versions of the drugs are expensive, and cutting down an adult dose of the medication to give it to a child is tricky. Without treatment, however, nearly a third of HIV-positive infants...
...need is great. More than 2 million children in Africa under age 15 are living with HIV, according to a study published last week by UNAIDS and the World Health Organization. Of these youngsters, perhaps 660,000 are sick enough to require medical intervention. Yet only 1 in 20 children who need ARVs get them. In addition, fewer than 1 in 10 HIV-positive mothers receive the drugs they need to keep from transmitting the virus to their newborns...
...This lack of basic rights trickles down to the children who are often under women's care. "I saw a nine-year-old girl, who had just tested HIV-positive two weeks ago," continues Kim. "I had never seen a CD4 count so low; I could not believe she was still walking without blatant evidence of infection. I tried to impress upon her father the urgency of the situation, the full import of such an immunocompromised state, the dire need for ARVS, urging him to return as soon as possible for adherence counseling with a second caregiver. His response...
...Dealing with the still rampant stigma over HIV remains a challenge as well. "The nurses scold me for 'talking too loud about HIV' while I'm [on rounds seeing patients]," Sarah Kim writes a month after arriving in Lesotho. "Sometimes I feel like saying, 'well the majority of this ward is positive so we have to talk about it!' But I realize that I shouldn...