Tag Archives: HIV/AIDS

Tropical Disease Experts Urge Integration of NTD and HIV/AIDS Interventions

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At this year’s American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) conference, experts emphasized the need to integrate neglected tropical disease (NTD) and HIV/AIDS interventions. Many of those who suffer from NTDs are also infected with HIV, and addressing both diseases with one intervention would actually be cost-effective and more clinically beneficial. Below is an article published by ASTMH that describes in depth the benefits of integration:

Global HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment efforts are missing a major opportunity to significantly improve health conditions in poor countries by simply adding low-cost care for the many other chronic and disabling diseases routinely afflicting and often killing these same patients, according to a panel of disease experts who spoke at the annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH).

“People want better health; they do not understand why we silo diseases,” said Judd Walson, a global health and infectious disease expert at the University of Washington. “If you die from malaria, you don’t care that your HIV was treated. Communities want us to leverage the resources we have to treat and prevent disease as effectively as possible.”

Walson and his colleagues on the panel noted that many victims of HIV/AIDS also typically suffer from one or more of about 17 neglected, but burdensome, tropical diseases often called “diseases of poverty” because they prey on the “bottom billion”—the world’s poorest people. They include ailments such as trachoma, schistosomiasis, lymphatic filariasis, leishmaniasis, Chagas disease and onchocerciasis, all of which are either insect-borne disease, bacterial infections, or caused by parasitic worms. Click here to continue reading.

Foreign Aid Is Not a Rathole

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Photo credit: Google Images

On this World AIDS Day, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a special adviser at the White House Office of Management and Budget, contributes an op-ed to The New York Times. Dr. Emanuel discusses the progress we’ve made using foreign aid in the fight against HIV/AIDS, along with urging the need for more attention and efforts dedicated to addressing neglected tropical diseases. Check out the excerpt below, or click here to read the full op-ed on The New York Times:

“Many Americans feel that foreign assistance is like money poured down a rathole. The United States contributes more money every year — spending nearly a third of all global health aid — while tangible results in developing countries can be hard to see.

But the “rathole” argument is dead wrong. Indeed, this World AIDS Day, Dec. 1, provides a perfect opportunity to assess the results of our global health assistance efforts and to recognize the tremendous amount we have accomplished.”

 

 

“The most important cause of HIV you’ve never heard of”

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Science Speaks is a project of the Center for Global Health Policy. It is resource containing the latest developments in tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. ScienceSpeaks recently featured Sabin Vaccine President Dr. Peter Hotez, and picked his brain about the link between NTDs and HIV:

“At a recent briefing on Capitol Hill entitled, “Making the Case for Cost-Effectiveness of Vaccines for Global Health,” Peter Hotez, MD, PhD, President of the Sabin Vaccine Institute, talked about a little-known infection called schistosomiasis. A disease caused by parasitic worms, Hotez called it “the most important cause of HIV you’ve never heard of.”

Moving from George Washington University to Baylor College of Medicine at the beginning of August, Hotez is a professor of pediatrics and molecular virology and microbiology at Baylor and is also chief of a new Section of Pediatric Tropical Medicine and founding Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine. He is the current president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and is the Texas Children’s Hospital Endowed Chair of Tropical Pediatrics.   Science Speaks spoke with Hotez to find out more about the parasitic infection, who is most susceptible and how it increases HIV transmission.”

Read the full blog entry here.

New Editorial Highlights Importance of NTD Treatments Into Existing Control Programs for HIV-AIDs, TB and Malaria

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Today, a new editorial authored by Peter Hotez, Jeffrey Sachs and others in the New England Journal of Medicine reinforces the importance of integrating neglected tropical disease (NTD) control measures into existing control efforts for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

Highlighting a growing body of evidence from global health interventions over the past several years, the editorial argues that there are significant gains that can be achieved by adding treatments for the seven most prevalent NTDs to prevention and control programs targeting HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, including those supported by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

At approximately 50 cents per per­son annually, the value of tying NTD control to other major health initiatives poses one of the most cost effective health interventions avail­able. The editorial also outlines the operational synergies of integrating control and elimination efforts into existing health interventions.  For instance, community drug distributors who provide ivermectin for onchocer­ciasis also provide insecticide-treated bed nets for malaria pro­tection, and bed nets appear to interrupt the transmission of lymphatic filariasis (and possibly other NTDs).

Additionally, low-cost anthelminthic drugs can be administered to pregnant women for intestinal helminth infections and schistosomiasis, thereby improving preg­nancy outcomes.  These drugs could be co-administered with intermittent preventive treatment (IPT) for malaria during pregnancy or with antiretroviral drugs for reducing mother-to-child HIV transmis­sion.

Click here to read the press release and here to access the NEJM website.