Nation - Government AIDS success (great if true)

Thai AIDS death toll down sharply in 2005
Published on Jan 02 , 2006

The number of deaths from AIDS last year fell sharply because of much wider access to anti-retroviral drugs in Thailand, the public health ministry said Monday.

Some 1,478 people died from AIDS between January and November last year compared to 6,593 for the same period in 2004, the ministry said.

"The sharp drop is because of widespread access to anti-retroviral drugs which resulted in improvements to the lives of people living with AIDS and HIV," Thawat Suntrajarn, the Disease Control Department director said in a statement.

"The ministry has targetted a reduction in new AIDS/HIV cases to not more than16,000 in 2006," or a cut of about 10 percent, Thawat said.

There were an estimated 18,000 new AIDS/HIV cases reported in 2005, mostly among homosexuals and teenagers, he added.

Health authorities will increase their anti-AIDS campaigns for teenagers, particularly in tourist cities such as Pattaya and Phuket, stocking some 24 million condoms in 4,575 vending machines nationwide, Thawat said.

The ministry also aims to drastically reduce babies born HIV-positive. Last year, some 2,400 were born HIV-positive but this year the target is several hundred such infections.

Thailand made low-cost anti-retroviral drugs available on its national health scheme from October for the more than half a million people here living with HIV/AIDS.

The drugs, produced in Thailand, were available as part of a health scheme which allows the poor to receive hospital treatment for 30 baht (75 cents) per visit.

/Agence France-Presse

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This is great news and heartening to hear that the drugs are reaching those who need them and in sufficient quantities to make significant inroads into the numbers of fatalities.

To be spending significant sums of money treating those who have caught this disease is wonderful. What is sad is that they have slashed the educational budget drastically. Increases have been noted amongst young people and homosexuals and there is now a rise in the numbers of new cases after a long period of static numbers.

http://www.avert.org/aidsthai.htm

Might be a bit controversial on my first post to this new forum but, could someone please explain to me how the powerful antiretrovirals, which cause sickness in healthy patients, are actually meant to improve the long term health of those whom are already considered to have a weakened immune system, and general health below the healthy baseline at time of treatment?

Salt in the wound?

"It is the main type of treatment for HIV or AIDS. It is not a cure, but it can stop people from becoming ill for many years. The treatment consists of drugs that have to be taken every day for the rest of someone's life.

HIV is a virus and when it is in a cell in the body it produces new copies of itself. With these new copies, HIV can go and infect other previously healthy cells. So HIV can quickly spread through the billions of cells in the body, if it is not stopped from reproducing or producing new copies of itself. Antiretroviral treatment (ART) for HIV infection consists of drugs which work by slowing down the reproduction of HIV in the body.

The drugs are often referred as:

antiretrovirals
anti-HIV drugs
HIV antiviral drugs." http://www.avert.org/aidstreatment.htm

I don't know the answer but I do know that they work and I do know how to Google where 470,000 sites await your investigations.

I don't know the answer but I do know that they work and I do know how to Google where 470,000 sites await your investigations.

How could you know they work? I could eat an apple a day, and not catch a cold thereafter. Doesn't mean the apples prevent me getting sicker, nor that they maintain my health. Same goes for antiretrovirals.

Google, being a search engine, provides resources ordered by popularity; it provides popular opinion. Popular opinion surrounding HIV comes down to “have faith in the medication" which is your viewpoint too.

I guess I just don't comprehend how a substance that makes a healthy person sicker in the long run, could possibly make a sick person better in the long run. No website I have visited seems to address this fully. Antiretrovirals seem to work in mysterious ways.

[Geezer]

Objective, we can see how concerned you are about this subject. I assume you have done considerable investigation before posting.

How do YOU suggest the HIV/AIDS problem be dealt with?

[bkkguy]

How do YOU suggest the HIV/AIDS problem be dealt with?

some Chinese herb that his family sells on the Internet?

bkkguy

objective read my rant so no need to let it linger.

Sorry to be harsh but you asked for it. I will not be seeing any reply that you make. This Ignore button is a great feature.

I asked a question, and the response now is “don't question it, unless you have something better.” If we all took that line of thought, nobody would ever question the effectiveness of anything. How else can we learn if we do not question that which is not understood?

Simply quoting popular opinion over and over, doesn't help to answer an otherwise simple question.

I choose to stick to my guns and maintain my questioning of a approach that doesn't appear to make sense. Perhaps that is too much to ask, without facing angry political backlash.

[Geezer]

"I asked a question, and the response now is тАЬdon't question it, unless you have something better.тАЭ"

You obviously can't read, soooo... You are ignored. Troll on.