GENEVA: Nearly 10 million more people infected with the Aids virus now meet medical standards for receiving HIV drugs, according to revised UN guidelines released yesterday, which experts say could avert 6.5 million deaths or new infections by 2025.
But achieving this goal will be a challenge, as it will add some $2bn a year to the bill to fight the 32-year Aids epidemic, they acknowledged.
“Treating people with HIV earlier ... can both keep them healthy and lowers the amount of virus in the blood, which reduces the risk of passing it to someone else,” the World Health Organization (WHO) said in new recommendations for combatting the HIV/Aids pandemic.
Around 34 million people worldwide were living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in 2011, nearly 70 percent of them in sub-Saharan Africa, according to WHO statistics.
The UN agency’s previous treatment guidelines, set down in 2010, called for drug initiation when the tally of CD4 cells — the key immune cells targeted by HIV — reached 350 cells or less per microlitre of blood.
Under this benchmark, 16.7 million people in low and middle-income countries were medically eligible last year to receive the drug “cocktail”, which rolls back infection although it does not cure it. Despite years of fund-raising and efforts to build medical infrastructure in poor countries, only 9.7 million of the 16.7 million currently get the treatment.
Yesterday, WHO said that, after weighing evidence for drug efficacy, benefits for the immune system and potential side effects, it recommended raising the CD4 threshold to 500 cells per microlitre of blood.AFP
