Decades Later, The Fight against HIV Continues
It has been 36 years since HIV was first identified in 5 young men in Los Angeles, but for doctors and patients, the fight continues still today.
The Ryan White HIV and AIDS program, headed by Dr. Laura Cheever, provides treatment to more than half the people across the country living with HIV. Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, the Deputy Commissioner of Disease Control with the NYC Health Department, said the New York Metropolitan Area received more than $100 million in Ryan White funding in 2016 to help more than 16,000 people with the disease and provide testing to another 20,000 people at risk.
Dr. Cheever said treatment today is much simpler than it was decades ago. According to her, back in the 1990s people with HIV and AIDS had to take more than a dozen pills a day— she said patients' lives pretty much revolved around taking their medication. Now, a treatment called Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy, or HAART, is as easy as one pill a day, with few side effects. Cheever said there is also another preventative treatment available, but not enough people are taking advantage of it.
"There is actually a medication now that someone who is at high risk, in terms of their behavior, of getting HIV can take every day to prevent them from getting HIV," Cheever said, but "not enough people are using that medication."
Cheever said this is the case with a lot of young people who do not understand the risks of HIV, or are complacent about it. Another problem she identified is the stigma she said still surrounds HIV and AIDS. She said the social consequences of having HIV have forced people to avoid getting diagnosed, or to avoid treatment if they do test positive.
"I, in my practice, do still regularly see people who were diagnosed years ago but never came into care until they got quite sick," Cheever said.
But, the doctors were still optimistic about how much progress has been made in fighting HIV.
"As HIV treatment has improved, people with HIV have been able to live longer and healthier lives," Daskalakis said. "Newly diagnosed people are not given a death sentence, but instead a new plan for engaging with a health care provider and taking care of themselves."
Similarly, Cheever said the new face of HIV is aging. Before modern treatments, she said people who contracted HIV typically only had months to live. Now, however, she said nearly half of the Ryan White program's clients in 2015 were at least 50 years old. She said since most new cases are in young people, this demonstrates how much longer people with HIV are living.
Cheever said while a cure may not be found in her lifetime, she believes one can be found in the next generation.
