Réjean Thomas
4th year of the fight against AIDS
We are living in historic times, that is, the fight against two pandemics at the same time and the post COVID-19 period will mainly affect poor countries. UNAIDS predicts hundreds of thousands more deaths worldwide because access to treatment and prevention is limited.
According to UNAIDS, “The concomitant presence of HIV and COVID-19 has serious consequences. People living with HIV experience more severe consequences and have greater co-morbidities from COVID-19 than people not living with HIV, and by mid-2021 most did not have access to vaccines COVID-19.
Studies in England and South Africa have found that the risk of dying from COVID-19 in people with HIV is twice as high as in the general population.
Sub-Saharan Africa is home to two-thirds (67%) of people living with HIV. But the vaccines that can protect them don’t come quickly enough. As of July 2021, less than 3% of people in Africa had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
Closures caused by COVID-19 and other restrictions have disrupted HIV testing and, in many countries, have led to a sharp drop in HIV diagnoses and referrals. «
In 2021 we are fortunate to have simple antiretrovirals (often one pill a day and even injectable solutions. We have a good drug insurance system, but I believe that HIV treatment, as in many country, should be free, as too many sufferers delay treatment or periodically stop treatment for financial reasons.
In many countries, triple therapy is 100% free because it is a public health problem. Stopping triple therapy can have severe consequences on your health, but also on that of others. In Quebec, treatment for STIs is free for these reasons.
However, HIV is an STI!
Ending AIDS requires better accessibility to encourage testing and treatment.
Thanks to the effectiveness of the combined antiretroviral therapies available, people with the disease now have a life expectancy that matches that of the general population.
HIV infection has developed into a chronic disease, which requires long-term treatment. Over time, the pharmacological management of PLHIV has become more complicated due to the comorbidities associated with aging. These aspects are all the more complex in aging PLHIV infected with multidrug-resistant HIV, for whom the choice of still active antiretrovirals (ARVs) is limited.