It is frightening how many people still think they are not vulnerable to HIV/AIDS. A few weeks back I met up with someone who’s partner was diagnosed HIV+ twenty years ago. They have unprotected sex. Am I missing something or is this person being irresposible. It is like playing ‘Russian Roulette’ just a matter of time before your luck runs out. Even if both partners are infected protection is a must. What do you think?, personally I would not take the chance.
There are more than 25 antiretroviral (ARV) medications currently available and numerous potential combinations or treatment regimens. Once you find a treatment regimen that is right for you the tough part begins – making sure it keeps working.
Two major factors that can affect the success of your treatment are adherence and resistance. Adherence refers to how closely you follow your treatment regimen, taking the correct medication at the right time, the right dose and in the right way. Resistance occurs when the virus in your body no longer responds to the medications you are taking.
http://www.tibotec-hiv.com/bgdisplay.jhtml?itemname=adherence_and_resistance
I will meet and speak to the SASOHN members at Alpha Pharm – Brickfield Rd on Tuesday 8th March 2011 from 12h30 and look forward to an interesting afternoon in their company.
SASOHN – South African Society of Occupational Health Nursing. Will have confirmation on Monday as to whether I will be addressing these members,at very short notice I might add. Tuesday lunch time, which means the noon appointment will have to either be brought forward or postponed. Things are looking up!
| Cindy says; The topic is targeted at the health care professionals, however it should also be applied to the public, without your effort, and acceptance the health care professional’s job is pointless.
What is your take on this matter? Combating stigma, isolation, stereotypes, and discrimination. By showing, their own support and responsibility to care for all people, regardless of their health or social status, health care professionals can act as role models for others in helping combat stigma, discrimination, and isolation of people living with HIV/AIDS. Prevention strategies will become far more successful when HIV is treated like any other disease, and when people feel safe to be open about their HIV status. However, health care professionals can become advocates for acceptance and care only if they look inward and first examine their own beliefs, values, assumptions, and attitudes towards HIV/AIDS. This can be done individually or in groups by asking and reflecting on the following questions (WHO, 2000a:6-5):
Health care professionals should also think about and listen to the language they use when they speak: prejudiced language may alienate them from their target group. While saying ‘He caught AIDS’ and ‘He has AIDS’ may mean the same thing, the first sentence is loaded with negative meaning that betrays the implicit attitudes of the speaker. (Such a negative meaning may be that AIDS is something that we the, innocent, have no control, something that we ‘catch’ from ‘them’ – the contaminated ‘others’) People often say ‘He is HIV’ instead of ‘He is HIV positive’. A sentence constructed like this implies an identity with the virus, i.e. the person is the virus instead of the person has the virus. AIDS educators should also be careful not to use sexist language. Always to refer to he and him in the context of HIV/AIDS may imply that men are always the ‘guilty’ party. Victimising language should also be avoided. Instead of saying, ‘She suffers from AIDS’ one should rather say ‘She lives with AIDS’ or ‘She is HIV positive’. Rather than referring to ‘rape victims’ use positive language and refer instead to ‘rape survivors’. Be careful not to fall into the trap of using prejudiced or discriminatory language. If you refer to people with HIV infection as ‘those people’, you are clearly dividing the world into two groups: the innocent, healthy us and the guilty diseased them. While we all sometimes think in terms of stereotypes, we should make every effort to be aware of our own stereotypes so that we can root them out and thus avoid offending others and hurting feelings. If we interact with a group, we will quickly learn to recognise our own prejudices and eliminate them. The irrational and often exaggerated fears associated with HIV/AIDS can be directly addressed through educational programmes based on sound medical, social, and psychological knowledge. To be successful, such programmes must be sustained and supported over time. Prevention strategies will continue to be compromised if fear, ignorance, intolerance, and discrimination against HIV-positive people persist. Healthcare professionals have a responsibility to help ‘normalise’ HIV in the communities where they work so that modes of transmission and prevention can be addressed without the emotional and attitudinal values that are currently getting in the way of open dialogue. Counsellors and other healthcare professionals should not only ‘advocate for Universal Precautions, but also tolerance and knowledge about HIV/AIDS’ (WHO, 2000a6-4). (HIV/AIDS Care & Counselling – Alta Van Dyk 4th Edition 132-133) |
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STIGMA Definition of Stigma – Stig´ma
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ScienceDaily (Feb. 4, 2011) — Australian scientists have successfully cleared a HIV-like infection from mice by boosting the function of cells vital to the immune response.
A team led by Dr Marc Pellegrini from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute showed that a cell signaling hormone called interleukin-7 (IL-7) reinvigorates the immune response to chronic viral infection, allowing the host to completely clear virus. Their findings were released in the February 3 edition of the journal Cell.
Dr Pellegrini, from the institute’s Infection and Immunity division, said the finding could lead to a cure for chronic viral infections such as HIV, hepatitis B and C, and bacterial infections such as tuberculosis, which are significant economic and global health burdens.
Current approaches to curing chronic infections tend to focus on generating a long-lived immune response to a specific disease. Dr Pellegrini, working with colleagues Mr Simon Preston and Mr Jesse Toe, and collaborators Professors Pamela Ohashi and Tak Mak from the Ontario Cancer Institute, argues that long-lived immune responses to chronic diseases are not always effective, and has instead concentrated on how the immune response can be manipulated to better fight infection.
“Viruses such as HIV and hepatitis B and C overwhelm the immune system, leading to establishment of chronic infections that are lifelong and incurable,” Dr Pellegrini said. “Despite tremendous efforts, long-lived immune responses for some of these viruses are ineffective, because the body is so overrun by virus that the immune system, in particular T cells, just give up trying to battle the infection. Some people have coined the phrase ‘immune exhaustion’ to explain the phenomenon. Our approach is to discover some of the mechanisms that cause this immune exhaustion, and manipulate host genes to see if we can boost the natural immune response in order to beat infection.”
The team investigated the role of IL-7, a naturally-occurring immune hormone, in a mouse model of HIV infection. IL-7 is a cytokine (cell signalling hormone) that plays a critical role in immune system development and maintenance.
“We found that IL-7 boosted the immune response in a pretty profound fashion, such that animals were able to gradually clear the virus without too much collateral tissue damage,” Dr Pellegrini said.
Further investigations revealed that, at the molecular level, IL-7 switched off a gene called SOCS-3.
“In an overwhelming infection, SOCS-3 becomes highly activated and suppresses the immune response, probably as a natural precaution to prevent ‘out-of-control’ responses that cause collateral damage to body tissue,” Dr Pellegrini said. “In the case of these overwhelming infections, the immune system effectively slams on the brakes too early, and the infection persists.”
Mr Preston, who worked on the SOCS-3 studies, said that switching off the SOCS-3 gene boosted the immune system and helped the animals to completely eliminate the infection.
“The key for us was figuring out that turning off SOCS-3 only really worked when it was within T cells,” Mr Preston said. “It allowed the immune response to boost the number of virus-specific T cells and have an immune response good enough to eliminate the virus without initiating an immune response that was too large and would make the animal sick.”
Dr Pellegrini said the research had provided excellent ideas for new therapies that could target and boost host immune cells to fight disease, rather than targeting the disease itself.
“The findings could help to develop drugs that target some of these host molecules, such as SOCS-3, and turn them off for very short, defined periods of time to reinvigorate the T cells, allowing them to regroup to fight infection,” he said.
This research was supported by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, the Canadian Institute for Health and the Cancer Research Institute.
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Walter and Eliza Hall Institute.
Snippet 3
On numerous occasions, chased out of my own home, walking barefoot for 5km on hot tar to safety, ending up with massive blisters under my feet of which I still have the calluses to prove it. The lesson learned here, always wear shoes! Then, would you believe it, married him and stayed in this disastrous marriage for another four years.
Why, there was to be a payoff amongst other things I believed I could transform him but believe me an abuser remains an abuser and will never change unless there is a serious intervention coupled with counselling. Roddy had numerous doctors’ prescribing medication for his moods but never went for counselling. One incident I will share is the time he was watching television in my home when my then seven-year-old son was playing with a rifle type water pistol, squirted Roddy who pulled the gun out of my child’s hands and hit him with it. I was on him like a lion whose cub is in danger and beaten yet again for defending my innocent child.
My first husband and a friend at one point during this undesirable situation arrived on my doorstep, armed and ready to chase him away, fortunately for them all he had already left and the situation was defused.
1. Antiretroviral treatment is a cure for AIDS? Y/N
2. Getting AIDS means you are going to die? Y/N
3. Are Weight loss, diarrhoea, shingles and swollen glands symptoms of HIV? Y/N
4. Is it possible to know that a person is HIV positive if he/she gets tested immediately after exposure to the virus? Y/N
5. Rich/decent people cannot get HIV/AIDS? Y/N
Not necessarily. A person can be infected with HIV and test negative for up to six months from the time of infection. This “window period” means the person should take a second test after six months to be completely sure that they don’t have HIV, particularly if the person has engaged in high-risk behaviours.
Snippet 2
I went directly to the GP in charge of Blaine, had her immediate superior called up as well as the offending Poison Dwarf, who to this day has only been moved elsewhere as far as I know but where to I have not bothered to find out. At the time however there was a local man that I knew from Pinetown who approached me with the information that in her drunken state and she and her boyfriend are known heavy drinkers, seen by myself on numerous occasions as we frequented the same after hour venues, was telling whoever would listen what mine and *Blaine’s status was. A person who I will call *Doug offered to make an affidavit with details of her disclosure in order for me to pursue. Six years later and numerous polite requests, I am still waiting for *Doug to hold good his promise, even though I managed to deny and convince all and sundry that Blaine only had bowel TB due to contracting the disease through the type of work he did, plumbing, I am not sure that I convinced that many people about him. I do think however that I managed to fool a number of people about myself, although they will on release of this book, say “I knew it all along”, yeah right.
*Real names not used* to be continued……..
