While we have looked at various successes and failures when dealing with HIV and AIDS in Africa this week, another potential problem in the region is the increase in drug-resistant HIV. This problem mostly occurs when patients don’t take their medications properly and is on the rise in Eastern and Southern Africa. However, Central and Western Africa haven’t seen similar problems. While drug-resistant HIV isn’t unique to Africa, it is growing there more than it is elsewhere.
Factors involved with this could include lack of clean water to take the medication and absence of frequent patient monitoring. Health care professionals continually monitoring patients may be one of the biggest issues in Africa, as not all HIV drug regimens are the same. As seen here, there are a number of different drugs on the market and each patient needs a customized plan.
Lack of health care resources, along with strained heath care systems due to the high number of patients in certain regions of Africa also contribute to improper patient monitoring and make it harder for people to properly follow their regimens. One of the biggest ways to help correct this problem is through education. Properly instructing patients on not only how to properly take their drugs, but also stressing the importance of following the regimen are good foundational steps. In addition, governments must continue to make resources such as access to health professionals and affordable drugs readily available to patients.
News article source: BBC News
HIV drug information source: AIDSinfo
Image source: Albany Times Union
Is it too early to see what the affects of education and other measures to lower cases of drug resistant HIV? Also i would be very curious to know why Eastern and Southern Africa are having a bigger problem with it than Central and Western
ReplyDeleteI believe the best way to fight the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa is education. In addition to help with preventative measures (such as education programs for safe-sex, which has shown to be more effective than abstinence campaigns) it could help with patients appropriately taking their medicine. As you noted part of the issue is that patients are not taking the medication properly, part which of might be due to people not understanding that HIV/AIDS is a lifetime disease. They may incorrectly think they've been cured after taking the medicine for a while. Education could help solve both of these issues, from a preventative and post-infection perspective.
ReplyDeleteI'm really curious about the geographic differences as well. In the article it states that drug resistance is growing by 29% in East Africa and 14% in Southern Africa compared to no growth in Western and Central Africa. That seems like such significant discrepancy, I'm wondering if there's other influences at work here. Maybe cultural differences? Perhaps there's different approaches to education and medicine? Also, I'd be interested to know when this steady increase began.
ReplyDeleteIn our role play in class last Friday, my group and I were assigned to be the African leaders. We were asked what we thought was the best way to deal with the issue of HIV/AIDS and what we all agreed upon was education. There is no doubt that if people were better informed of how to get treated for HIV and how to prevent it, the continent would be a different place. Education would also help in producing more health care professionals that seem to be lacking from what I understand of this article. If there were more professionals, more patients would be cared for, and maybe the drug-resistant HIV patients wouldn't be so high. I liked what Charlotte said about looking more into the geographical differences of this problem, that seems like it would change a few statistics. My questions include: how many patients are resisting the HIV meds? Is there a significant amount already or is the number just slowly rising? Where did they initially see this happening and is it worse in that country more than any other?
ReplyDeleteI am not an expert on any of this but I would guess that part of the reason for the geographic difference in the rise of Drug-Resistant AIDS in east/south Africa versus central and western africa is due to the very infrastructure that governments have placed there to help treat it.
ReplyDeleteAccording to my Medical Anthropology Professor one of the most common ways Drug Resistant HIV evolves is from patients who start the regiment and then stop, giving the strain time to evolve. In class we examined primarily Southern and eastern countries recent policies in dealing with Aids, and while they may provide an opportunity for increased service, we also saw that they had issues with reliable stock. Add this to the issues of education and patient monitoring you brought up it leads to the exact scenario where people either stop taking the drugs or cannot take their drugs.