S.Africa nearly wipes out infant AIDS infections: study

[Guest guest]

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/africa-nearly-wipes-infant-aids-infections-study-160246\

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S.Africa nearly wipes out infant AIDS infections: study

By Zieminski | AFP – Thu, 9 Jun, 2011

South Africa's programme to prevent HIV in babies has achieved a 96.5 percent

success rate in wiping out transmission from infected pregnant mothers, the

Medical Research Council said Thursday.

An inaugural national evaluation survey among the world's biggest AIDS

population tested 9,915 infants at public clinics, of whom 31.4 percent were

exposed to the virus but only 3.5 percent tested positive, the government

research body said.

" This survey was the first-ever rigorous national... evaluation in the nine

provinces of South Africa, " said Ameena Goga of the MRC.

Infection rates among mothers ranged from 15.6 percent in the sparsely populated

Northern Cape to 43.9 percent in KwaZulu-Natal, which is the hardest hit region

in the country.

Babies aged between four and eight weeks between June and December last year

were tested at 580 sites across South Africa.

The study will be repeated this year and in 2012 to evaluate transmission rates

over three years and the babies will be tracked up until they are 18 months old.

Last year, South Africa introduced new anti-AIDS drugs guidelines that include

treatment for mothers at an earlier stage of illness.

The government was previously heavily criticised for refusing to roll out the

life-saving drugs, but 1.4 million people are now on treatment.

The virus infects 5.6 million of the 50-million population, according to UN

estimates.

[Guest guest]

When I was in college around 1999, a man from the South African embassy came to the International Studies class. He was asked even back then about the AIDS problem in his country. He said there was no AIDS problem, that HIV didn't lead to AIDS and that it was caused directly by gay sex by a means I won't describe here. None of us could believe that someone in government of any nation could be that daft.

While this study may also be good news, is these other figures are correct, then 10% of the population is infected. At that rate and the way the adults are still carrying on sexually, then it might be moot. AIDS is already causing an orphan problem in many countries because so many adults are dying off from AIDS and leaving the kids alone. Now, I don't think that giving AIDS medicine is going to help very much. I've seen programs about this and the AIDS medicines make people so sick they stop taking them. Most of the victims are so weak and malnourished that they can't eat at all because of the drugs, so they stop taking them. For that matter, supplies are random meaning sometimes a person gets them and sometimes they don't. This pattern of usage is leading to an evolution in the virus faster than seen in other places. For that matter, all those weakened immune systems are also giving rise to different forms of existing diseases that are quite contagious and resistant to medicines.

In a message dated 6/10/2011 3:08:53 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, no_reply writes:

The government was previously heavily criticised for refusing to roll out the life-saving drugs, but 1.4 million people are now on treatment.The virus infects 5.6 million of the 50-million population, according to UN estimates.

[Guest guest]

" While this study may also be good news, is these other figures are correct,

then 10% of the population is infected. "

You can also walk around looking completely healthy for many years before the

symptoms manifest themselves. Meanwhile, you could have infected many people and

they could have infected many, etc. Sooner or later, there will be a flood on

hospitals and all of these people will be AIDS people who are finally showing

symptoms, and this will probably take place all over the world.

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