Option for couples to test together, access ART for prevention can reduce HIV risk

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May 9 2012

"If we don't leverage the power of innovation to transform how health services are provided and utilized, efforts to stop new HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths can reach a stalemate," UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibe writes in this opinion piece in the Huffington Post's "Healthy Living" blog. "Many of the advances in HIV prevention and treatment have come through innovation and applying knowledge in new ways," he continues, highlighting the protective benefits of male circumcision and the introduction of antiretroviral therapy (ART) for people living with HIV.

"Now the same knowledge has been proven to stop new HIV infections among sexually active people," he writes, noting, "Couples in discordant relationships -- where one partner has HIV and the other does not -- can dramatically reduce the risk of HIV transmission if the partner with HIV takes antiretroviral treatment." He writes, "Unfortunately, about half of people living with HIV still do not know they have the virus. It starts with couples knowing their HIV status -- together." He concludes, "The power of couples to make a difference is immense. By providing couples with the option to test together and access antiretroviral treatment for prevention purposes, UNAIDS estimates that about an additional four million couples can be given this life-saving option," "tak[ing] us one more step forward in our quest for zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths" (5/7).

This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

Posted in: Men's Health News | Disease/Infection News | Pharmaceutical News

Tags: AIDS, Antiretroviral, Circumcision, Health Care, Healthy Living, HIV, HIV/AIDS, HIV-1, Research, UNAIDS, Virology, Virus

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The benefits of circumcision are questionable at best.

Tom Tobin says:

May 9, 2012 at 6:59 AM

The benefits of circumcision are questionable at best. If you knew the conflicts of interest which bring you the 60% hiv reduction rate, you would be scandalized. That number is being dismantled by scientists all over the world, who are exposing the shoddy scientific practices.
Why would circumcision be desirable for a male, and genital mutilation for a female?
There is no disease which circumcision prevents or cures.
Unlike circumcision, condoms protect, and they protect both partners at 98%, when used regularly and correctly.
Circumcision is the best stone age technology, and has been a cure looking for a disease in the US since the 1870s. The circumcision rate is dropping like a rock in Canada, the UK, Australia, the US, and pretty much everywhere but Africa, where those three incomplete trials have everyone full of false hope. Removing half the skin from a healthy human genital is almost never the best course of action.

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Medical Establishment Duped ? ? ?

Frank OHara says:

May 9, 2012 at 7:56 PM

It should be embarrassing for the medical establishment to be duped but here it is in black and white!

Anyone who knows anything about immunology would look at the facts and know male circumcision as an intervention against HIV/AIDS has been a miserable failure.  They have bought the African Studies hook line and sinker.

The US with 80% of sexually active males circumcised has the highest HIV rate of any industrialized nation in the world.  The African Studies “found” that male circumcision provides a 60% protective factor.  If male circumcision had any protective effect at all, these two statistics simply can not exist together.  If male circumcision had this effect, HIV/AIDS would never breeched our shores and would have never have become established.

A look into the past of the leaders of the studies shows the agenda.  The results of the study were predetermined.

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