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San Francisco, an early AIDS epicenter, is at the forefront of new approaches to HIV prevention and treatment. “In San Francisco, we could make the next 30 years the last 30 years,” said Dr. Grant Colfax, HIV prevention director at the city Department of Public Health. “Even five years ago, we were thinking more about how do we keep things from getting worse. Now we’re talking about, ‘Wow, this can really be done.’”
In 2010, San Francisco became one of the first US cities to advocate immediate antiretroviral (ARV) treatment for anyone testing positive for HIV, even if they have no symptoms.
Likewise, University of California-San Francisco (UCSF) researchers and Bay Area doctors spearheaded research demonstrating that medical interventions, beyond mere safe-sex messages, could help stave off the disease’s spread.
“In every way that HIV spreads, we have something new to offer that is highly effective in blocking the spread of the virus,” said UCSF professor Dr. Robert Grant, a Gladstone Institute for Virology and Immunology researcher leading antiviral studies. “We can envision now a time when HIV transmission no longer occurs, or only occurs in rare circumstances.”
However, global AIDS expert and Stanford professor Dr. David Katzenstein maintains that no “truly remarkable” advances in prevention or therapy have been made since the ARV cocktail in 1996. “The last two to five years has been demonstrating that stuff we thought was going to work really does work,” said Katzenstein.
Additionally, communities in need, both domestically and abroad, still have uneven access to prevention resources and treatment amid questions about who should pay for them.
Gayle Burns, interim executive director of the San Francisco-based Native American AIDS Project, is anxious about youth apathy. “They don’t see what we used to see. People are still testing positive. There’s still a lot of work to do,” said Burns.
The Friends of AIDS Foundation is dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for HIV positive individuals and empowering people to make healthy choices to prevent the spread of the HIV virus. To learn more about The Friends of AIDS Foundation, please visit: http://www.friendsofaids.org.
TOGETHER WE REMAIN STRONG!
