Millions More Need H.I.V. Treatment, W.H.O. Says

Can we have a reality check here?
MANY people in the U.S. cannot pay for medical care. MANY have Obamacare with deductibles so high that they cannot afford to be treated for anything, even HIV.
There seems to be a ton of money spent, proposals for another ton to be spent (all out of taxpayer's pockets) but many ordinary Americans and their children and families are still unable to receive health care.

HIV is a behavioral disease. It is not airborne and you cannot get it simply by touching another human being in passing. It is spread by performing certain acts. It winds up in the blood supply because the people whose infected blood was donated caught it by performing certain acts. Children who get it form their mother do so because their mother performed certain acts. Chang the behavior, kill the disease. Now the liberals' head may commence exploding.

Tnis is not a sustainable fix because someone else has to pay for the treatment and at some point they will want to stop paying. It may provide time to work on other more sustainable options. Another issue that people do not like to talk about is that cheap drugs from India are not always a quality product. Sometime they have lower than expected dosage to not shaving any active ingredient at all. Not all of the Indian drug comapnies work this way but you cannot tell which ones are producing a quality product from those that are not from the label or other web page.

HIV is happening via 'sex free society, frustration, lack of control on crimes and due to lack of awareness. Having sex is a extreme desire, so responsible societies must know how to address to control or educate people accordingly. Just distributing condoms is last solution & it is almost failed.
We must spend more on medicine research and medicine must be cheap in price and in assured availability. We must reduce budget on war and weapons. We must honestly struggle for peace and support for peace. if we want to keep this earth livable & Heaven. We must leave to living in heaven of fools.

The last I knew, there was a significant connection between promiscuity and HIV. If I walk off a cliff, I fall into a chasm 2,000 feet below. If I chose to have irresponsible sex, I can either contract or spread HIV. If I rape someone and they get HIV, then that person has my sympathy. There is no reason to assume that everyone with HIV is an idiot, as this article assumes. To use a common analogy, instead of providing fish to the world, those of us with a brain and some education need to teach those in the dark how to fish, or at least the connection between HIV and sex. Millions of Americans have died of many causes between research money has been diverted to helping promiscuous males who know better in this country. Give me a reason to put their bad choice ahead of Alzheimer's patients or other afflicted people who did not smoke their way into lung cancer or breast cancer and did not eat their way into heart disease.

The World Health Organization’s new guidelines on immediate treatment of HIV represent a paradigm shift in managing the disease and carrying out strategies to prevent its spread. Their new recommendation for antiretroviral therapy (ART) for all people infected with HIV—without a need for further testing to determine eligibility – underscores what the research shows: that immediately starting ART for HIV upon diagnosis is better for an HIV-infected person’s own health and also reduces their risk of transmitting HIV to others. WHO’s swift translation of this latest research into global guidance for policymakers is commendable and will have broad implications for HIV public health programs throughout the world, including those supported by Jhpiego, a global health non-profit and affiliate of Johns Hopkins University, where I work. As our HIV experts Drs. Tigistu A Ashengo and Jason Reed rightly point out: "With the new ART guidelines, there are now clear recommendations from WHO that all 37 million people on Earth infected with HIV should be treated, for their health and the health of their partners. With eligibility hurdles created by health systems and policies removed, delays between diagnosis and treatment and 'rationing treatment' may be a thing of the past."

This recommendation, if implemented, would do nothing more than stop the epidemic in its tracks. HIV is dependent on high post infection viral loads to propagate through the population. You are not going to stop people from having sex, but you can stop them from becoming infected with disease. You could argue that it is just one more mouth to feed on a planet whose ecosystem is in peril, let them die. You could also argue that the individual you save might have the idea which saves the world. Both views are extreme. It's important to remember many women become infected against their will in societies where they have little power. How much compassion is needed to create a middle ground where people are treated and the disease is eradicated? When women are educated and given equal power, the problem of overpopulation solves itself.

News articles in recent years said certain countries in Africa were no longer allowed to get AIDS drugs from U.N. agencies, the epidemic was too far gone and the supplies were too scarce. Triage was in effect and vaccines going to only countries with successful health programs, etc. Was widely reported in the NYT.

I hate to point this out, but everyone that spoke positively about this change in UN guidelines stands to DIRECTLY profit from any increased spending on AIDS. They aren't drilling for oil, or selling cigarettes, but as compassionate that they may be, they are profiting from other people's misery. It reminds of a story I read in the early 90's where a twerp who worked as a caregiver taking care of AIDS patients in their last days was quoted compalining about his future employment prospects now that the AIDS drug cocktails (which were new at the time) were improving the quality and length of lives for people who had AIDS or were HIV positive. No one in the Centers for Disease Control or WHO has any real interest in seeing AIDS go away. Not when there is money to be made from it.

NO millions more do not need HIV antiretroviral (ART) triple therapy as soon as they are found to be HIV positive. That would be a colossal waste of millions of dollars and a definite lack of compliance resulting in increased resistance to ART. The previous WHO guidelines based on CD4 counts below 350 were far more sensible. At the most, the guidelines could be made more stringent with CD4 counts of below 500 as the acceptable starting point for triple ART. Treatment with ART requires a massive health care support to monitor patients for liver damage and other short and long term toxic effects. It is not that simple as taking aspirin or even antibiotics. There are a large number of natural broad spectrum antivirals against human viruses (Google search for this) which could be considered as the first line of treatment to prevent progression of HIV infection and only when the CD4 counts have reached below an optimal level can ART be given under medical supervision and with assurance that the drugs will not be sold by the patients as has happened in some countries.

Warning: This is not PC. - Why does everyone have to pay for others' promiscuity? Those with aids are always complaining that we should do more. We are not allowed to be judgmental about the disease. They were just walking down the street and caught it. I feel sorry for the spouses who through no fault of their own are infected. I don't think it is going to be practical to treat all those infected. In the meantime, the treatment should be reserved for the victims. In Africa, women can't refuse their husbands who don't have any problem with fornicating with whomever, when the mood strikes and they don't like condoms. The Gates Foundation is funding research to invent a condom so wonderful that guys will want to use one. In the meantime, the women should be the ones to receive the drugs. Extending treatment to all will make a larger pool of those who will have a longer time to spread the disease.

If "untold millions" are on long-term prophylactic treatment, one question is whether the drugs and drug metabolites they excrete into the environment might pose a risk, for example to developing humans or other animals.

Even when prophylactics are provided for free, they go unused. How can they help anyone who will not help themselves? There seems to be no way to modify behavior in these countries, not even to save their lives.

So many of you are happy to advise spending billions on this giveaway program - as long as you don't have to pay it.

You are happy to complain miserably about the 'abusive pricing' of pharma companies, but they spent the money to build these vaccines.

You 'progressives' whine about the 'victims' of this disease, cautiously ignoring the wanton behavior of people who contract AIDS.

It's a good thing that none of you will ever be in charge.

I'm sure that beginning in January 2017, the Tea Party-led U.S. Congress, under president Donald "I want to give to the world" Trump, will get right on this.

I suggest people read Jon Rappaport's findings on the HIV test scam. They are notiriously inaccurate and have caused enormous harm to the people falsely disgnosed with HIV. HIV cannot lead to AIDS because AIDS is just another pharma corrupt money-spinning exercise. THe WHO are the people who declared that swine flu was a pandemic. What a lie that was and what profits were made from companies that would not allow the use of thier useless and dangerous vaccines unless they were given immunity from prosecution. That's the only immunity you will get from them. WHO should be investigated fro tgeir links to big pharma.

Sorry to be callous about it, but I don't think this is a good idea. Give people treatment for AIDS and they will inevitably spread it further. And, the earth is being gradually destroyed by the main cause of there being too many humans. Trying desperately to save millions of humans so they can double the population again in the next couple of decades seems like a self-defeating thing to do.

I know people have a lot of trouble coming to terms with this, but all humans die at some point. Keeping everyone around as long as possible only shortens the existence of humanity itself. If people can't keep their breeding in check, then famine and pestilence will be the only ways to keep the population low enough that humanity survives. War never works to decrease the population, unfortunately, as it is very popular.

I know a lot of naïve folks will yell at me over this, that's fine, but I think if the W.H.O. is going to go around saving lives, it should require vasectomies be done as a condition of the treatment. We need to cut down on population folks, and if y'all just don't get it, then humanity will cease to exist before long.

We have to face the fact that sexual promiscuity is exploding into a free-for-all around the world like never before. Morals are a joke, loyalties are threadbare, and matters may only get worse. Venereal diseases are sprouting like mushrooms after a storm, as various medias around the world become more and more sex-mad. Enjoying my middle age with a great wife who's as loyal as a man can want I feel not just complacent, but happy - and feel a little sympathy for those who have to plough through the morass of sexual discovery and experimentation.

A great move on the part of WHO, following the science that has strongly affirmed the benefits of immediate treatment for HIV. And also respecting the science increasingly showing that PrEP can lower HIV rates among high-risk populations. The big question now is money: Will major donor countries pony up the necessary billions?

If a massive campaign to people to use condoms failed, how can we be sure that we can get them to take their medicine properly? Oh yeah, more money.

Forget the rest of the world. In our own backyard in NJ the HMOs running NJ Medicaid Expansion are DENYING medications to HIV+ patients! The federal ADAP program paid for one pill per day meds which were easy to take, and improved health outcomes (reduced viral load to undetectable – that is, no likelihood of transmission). NJ Medicaid HMOs (which are also 100% federally funded) STOPPED THAT. They require HIV+ patients to take 3 pills per day because it is cheaper. They mandate that HIV+ patients FAIL with 3 pills (that is, increase their viral load and likelihood of transmission) before the HMOs will approve 1 pill per day.

(And the bozos in NJ Medicaid allowed this to happen.)

It is not big pharma that is the problem, it is big health insurance. And what happens when government is in bed with health insurers!

The cost would be a heck of a lot less if we took the patents back from the pharma and stopped letting them make their monopolistic profits off the backs of the sick. And don't tell me they need these profits to develop new drugs; these HIV meds were developed at public expense. Why we should incur massive expenses and keep people sick just to insure gargantuan profits to the pharmaceutical companies is beyond me.

So weeks after a major drug company was purchased and the prices skyrocketed, the WHO claims people now need these drugs? Is this purely a coincidence, or is someone within the WHO in bed with big pharmaceuticals?

There sure is a lot of editorializing in Mr. McNeil's report about the cost of treatment without any factual information to back up such concerns. Surely preventative medicine is cheaper than treating an increased number of infected individuals? Surely there is a compelling humanitarian case to be made for action given that millions of lives are on the line? I don't think you'd see such a callous subtext in a story about the costs of treatment for cancer, Alzheimer's or heart disease.

Treating uninfected people with anti-retroviral drugs to prevent infections will likely favor the emergence of medication-resistant strains of H.I.V. This is what happened with antibiotics when they were used used for decades to prevent or unnecessarily treat infections, giving rise to highly resistant bacteria and rendering antibiotics useless. What do we do when the same thing happens with H.I.V.?