{UAH} Deadly HIV Strain Descends Upon us
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BAD NEWS
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- Category: Local News
- Published on 03 December 2013
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New Deadly HIV Strain Descends Upon us at a Time the Infection Rate is Sky Rocketing as Doctors are Vainly Fighting to discover a Cure for the Scourge
By Daniels N.Tatya and Agencies
Alas…! Yet a new Deadly HIV Strain has been discovered by scientists in Africa.
Just a few hours after commemorating World AIDS day, a new and aggressive HIV strain was discovered dodging the fight that has been on for decades with doctors World wide grappling to find the Cure for the ailment that has claimed hundreds of millions of lives.
DR.S. Mishra (MBBS, M.PHIL, AFIH) Head of Hospital and Occupational Health Services at Mehta Hospital in Lugazi had just talked to The Investigator about HIV/AIDS on December 1st, World’s AIDS Day.
His words were of hoping for an HIV/AIDS free generation by 2020 with the prevalance rate estimated at 2.0%.
However the bad news of a new and aggressive HIV cannot be music to his ears as Swedish Scientists find an aggressive HIV Strain.
DR.Mishra’s hope was focused to the fact that with enough awareness especially to the Youths about the disease could make a lot of positive impact. He said if only we could engage our children in sports, the disease could be no more or with fewer infections by 2020.
New HIV Strain:
Swedish scientists have identified a new strain of HIV that appears to progress much faster than most previously identified variations of the virus.
The new strain, known as A3/02, is a recombinant, meaning it is across two previously identified HIV strains. Writing in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, Lund University researchers said that the infection moves from HIV to full-blown AIDS in about five years, nearly two to two and a half years faster than most previously known strains.
So far the new infection seems confined to West Africa. But experts fear that recombinants are becoming more common and could start to spread globally, especially to highly mobile regions such as Europe and the United States.
The researchers said recombinants develop faster than the "parental" strains they spring from, though fortunately, this latest strain seems treatable with existing drugs.
An HIV diagnosis changes to AIDS when a person's white blood cell count dips below 200, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Phalguni Gupta, a professor of infectious diseases and microbiology at the University of Pittsburgh School Of Graduate Health, said that most clinicians also consider a diagnosis of AIDS when someone with HIV develops a serious infection such as pneumonia, cancer or a wasting syndrome characterized by severe weight loss, diarrhea and high fever.
In poorer regions such as West Africa, tuberculosis is the leading cause of death among people with HIV.
Gupta, however, said it was misleading to say that this new strain was the most aggressive form of AIDS yet known. "There are some HIV types here in the United States that takes as little as two years to develop into AIDS," he noted.
Anal sex causes more trouble:
This information is particularly troubling in light of new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that found out, since 2005, there has been a 48 percent increase in unprotected anal sex in the U.S. among men who have sex with men.
Men who engage in risky sexual behavior are often unaware of their positive HIV status, the report found.
Strain needs monitoring:
Gupta said the new West African strain needs to be monitored to see if it transmits more readily than other types of HIV. This is a question the researchers haven't yet explored.
An estimated 34 million people globally have been diagnosed with HIV, according to the World Health Organization. Since the epidemic began more than 30 years ago, the infection has claimed more than 33 million lives, the CDC estimates.
There are glimmers of hope. Treatment, prevention and awareness have come a long way since the early days of the AIDS epidemic.
Case for Uganda:
In Uganda, the disease prevalence rate stands at 6.8 which is still a big percentage according to the fight that has been on for the last 30 years.
This entry gives an estimate of the percentage of adults (aged 15-49) living with HIV/AIDS.
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