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Your Health: December 1, 2009
On this world aids day... Health care officials recognize progress made.. And promote the fact there's work to be done to stop its destruction.
Worldwide about 33 million people are living with HIV. According to a United Nations report that number has remained unchanged for the past two years.
One positive factor could be expanded access to HIV/Aids medications available to people in the developing world, .
Promising advances in HIV/AIDS research this year include a topical microbicide gel found to cut infection in women by 30 percent; research on a possible AIDS vaccine, and a stem cell transplant potentially providing virtual immunity to HIV.
In the U.S. Health officials say, the annual rate of new HIV/AIDS infections has been stuck at 56,000 for the past decade.
The director of UAB Center for Aids Research says, one barrier is that many alabamians are HIV infected and don't know it.
Dr. Michael Saag says, "What we want to focus on in our state is identifying everyone who's HIV infected getting them into care and once in care treating them to get the amount of virus in their bloodstream to undetected levels once the virus is suppressed then they can go on and live a near normal lifespan and they won't transmit the virus to others."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health are planning major studies to see if better identification and treatment of HIV-positive people can help keep infection rates down.
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Swine flu infections appear to be dropping.
Federal health officials say the number of states reporting widespread flu has dropped from 43 to 32.
However, the number of U.S. children who have died from the illness has risen to about 200.
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