Latest news with #antiretroviral
ABC News
17 hours ago
- Health
- ABC News
PNG declares national HIV crisis
Andy Park: Papua New Guinea has declared a national HIV crisis with the number of new cases increasing by almost 50% in the last decade. PNG correspondent Marion Faa has the story. Marian Faa: Living as a transgender woman in Papua New Guinea, discrimination is part of Nancy's everyday life. Nancy: Papua New Guinea, like PNG, they still have this thing that, I mean if you're a man, you're a man and they don't really, like it's a male or a female, it's just one gender. Marian Faa: But when she was diagnosed with HIV 10 years ago, the stigma doubled. Nancy: I felt hopeless. I just felt like that was the end of my life, yeah, and it really affected me mentally. Marian Faa: Nancy is now healthier than ever thanks to the antiretroviral medication she takes regularly. That's not the case for many. Of the 120,000 people estimated to have HIV in PNG, less than half are accessing medication. And there's concern about a dramatic increase in new infections. Ken Wai is the National Health Secretary in PNG. Ken Wai: The biggest worry is we don't want to run the risk of increasing these numbers. Marian Faa: In the past decade, the number of new cases has nearly doubled from around 6,000 per year in 2015 to 11,000 last year. If the trend continues, Mr Wai says the whole country will suffer. Ken Wai: Then we are going to buy HIV medicine only and then we will run out of money to buy TB drugs and malaria drugs and typhoid drugs and diarrhoea drugs and every others. Marian Faa: He says the PNG government is doing its bit. Ken Wai: Government does not fail in providing money to buy HIV medicines. For the last five years, seven years, we've never run out of HIV medicines and we've never run out of HIV testing reagents. Marian Faa: But UNAIDS, the United Nations HIV prevention arm, says the health department could be doing more. Manoela Manova is the UNAIDS country director in PNG. Manoela Manova: The need for controlling the epidemic is huge, it's enormous and it is estimated to cost 280 million per year. It requires resources and our call is for the government at least to match and to allocate double the amount that is currently allocated. Marian Faa: In PNG, authorities say it'll take a concerted effort from individuals, donors and the government to get things under control. They're urging individuals to practice safe sex, use condoms and get regular health checks. Andy Park: Marion Faa there.
WIRED
20-06-2025
- Health
- WIRED
The FDA Just Approved a Long-Lasting Injection to Prevent HIV
Jun 20, 2025 7:30 AM Clinical trials have shown that six-monthly injections of lenacapavir are almost 100 percent protective against becoming infected with HIV. But big questions remain over the drug's affordability. Photograph: Konstantin Voronov/GETTY IMAGES The US Food and Drug Administration has just approved lenacapavir, an injectable form of HIV prevention that is almost 100 percent effective and requires only two doses per year. Science magazine described the medicine the most important scientific advance of 2024. In clinical trials, lenacapavir proved to be 99.9 percent effective in preventing HIV infection through sexual transmission in people weighing more than 35 kilograms. The drug, an antiretroviral, works not by stimulating an immune response, but by blocking HIV from reproducing during its early stages—specifically, by disrupting the function of the virus's capsid protein. This happens so long as the body receives injections every six months. Lenacapavir has already been approved in some countries as a treatment for HIV in people with forms of the virus that are resistant to other treatments. However, prior to this week, its prophylactic use had not been approved anywhere, making the FDA's decision a significant new development in the fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The drug is not the first medicine that can be taken preemptively to protect against an HIV infection: pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) pills were already available in many countries, including the United States. But these must be taken every day, and ensuring ongoing access to these medicines, and that people actually remember to take them, is a known challenge. It's hoped the long-lasting effects of lenacapavir will make it easier for people to stay protected against the virus. According to its creator, Gilead Sciences, lenacapavir will be marketed under the trade name Yeztugo. The company has committed to manufacturing 10 million doses by 2026. 'This is a historic day in the decades-long fight against HIV. Yeztugo is one of the most important scientific breakthroughs of our time and offers a very real opportunity to help end the HIV epidemic,' Daniel O'Day, president and CEO of Gilead, said in a statement on Wednesday. However, lenacapavir's price may be a barrier to access. Yeztugo will have an annual list price of $28,218 per person in the US. Winnie Byanyima, executive director of of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), has also flagged in the past that the drug is unaffordable for many people in Africa, where the medicine has the potential to have the biggest impact. Roughly two-thirds of the people living with HIV worldwide live in sub-Saharan Africa. Gilead said in a statement last year that it had been 'developing a strategy to enable broad, sustainable access globally' to lenacapavir, although the company has not yet provided detailed information on how it will do this. One option could be 'voluntary licensing,' where other companies are granted permission to produce and sell generic versions of a patented product exclusively to people in certain (often low-income) countries. Researchers at the University of Liverpool in the UK have calculated that a year's worth of lenacapavir could be made available for as little as $25. This story originally appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish.
News24
08-06-2025
- Health
- News24
Graphs that paint the picture of HIV in SA
Eight million people are living with HIV with more than six million being on treatment. Behind these big numbers lurk a universe of fascinating epidemiological dynamics. In this special briefing, Spotlight editor Marcus Low unpacks what we know about the state of HIV in South Africa. This is part 1 of 3. Four decades ago, hardly anyone in South Africa had HIV. Today, roughly one in eight people here are living with the virus. HIV has quite simply become a routine part of life in South Africa. But thanks to the fact that antiretroviral treatment is keeping several million people alive, HIV is no longer the crisis it was at the turn of the century. For many, the virus is still an all-too-real part of their lives. It still ranks among the country's top killers. As we will see in this Spotlight special briefing, there is good and bad news. We have made massive progress in our collective fight against HIV, especially since around 2008. But, as positive as the big picture may be, there are also reasons to be worried. In the 10 sections of this special briefing, we have used lots of graphs and an interactive table to liven things up. We have drawn almost entirely on estimates from Thembisa, the leading mathematical model of HIV in South Africa and also the basis for UNAIDS' country numbers. The big picture Total PLHIV in SA Graphic: Spotlight South Africa has the world's biggest HIV epidemic. Eight million people, or 12.8% of the population, lived with the virus in 2024. Despite the massive progress we've made in the last 20 years, this absolute number has kept increasing, and, at least by this measure, the epidemic has kept getting bigger. But while more people are living with HIV, dramatically fewer people are dying of HIV-related causes than two decades ago - we've gone from 281 000 HIV-related deaths in 2005/06 to 53 000 in 2023/24. This is mainly because antiretroviral medicines have kept several million people alive who would otherwise now be dead. The rate of new infections has also declined a lot, as shown in the above graph. South Africa's HIV epidemic is closely entwined with our tuberculosis (TB) epidemic. This is because untreated HIV breaks down the immune system, which then makes people vulnerable to falling ill with TB. Accordingly, TB is the top cause of HIV-related deaths in South Africa. Recovering life expectancy Just what a big deal HIV has been in South Africa is clear from estimates of life expectancy in the country. As HIV killed more and more people through the nineties and early 2000s, life expectancy dropped precipitously from 63.2 in 1990 to 53.2 in 2004. But then, as antiretroviral treatment started keeping more and more people alive, it increased again. It stood at 66.1 in 2024. Graphic: Spotlight There is much history that is not captured in this graph. Perhaps most notably, the introduction of antiretroviral treatment in South Africa's public sector was intentionally delayed by the state's policy of Aids denialism under then-president Thabo Mbeki. While the dramatic improvement from 2005 onward is impressive, life expectancy didn't have to drop as low as it did in the first place. The blip you can see on the right of the graph is a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. While significant, the broader trend is driven by HIV and the recovery from HIV. A massive treatment programme Of the eight million people living with HIV in South Africa, about 6.2 million or roughly four in five, were on treatment in 2024. This means South Africa has the world's most extensive HIV treatment programme by some distance. We take it somewhat for granted these days, but to treat so many people is a tremendous success story for which many healthcare workers, activists, government officials, donors, and others deserve great credit. That said, it is concerning that about one in five people with the virus are not on treatment. Treatment is recommended for everyone living with the virus. Though we focus on treatment coverage here, these numbers are often split further into the UNAIDS 95-95-95 targets. READ | Trump's HIV funding cuts will hit diabetes and cervical cancer treatment hard. Here's why In 2024, 95% of people living with HIV had been diagnosed, 81.5% of those diagnosed were on treatment, and 92% of those on treatment were virally suppressed - meaning the amount of virus in their blood was below a low threshold. The key takeaway from these numbers is that the most significant gap in South Africa's HIV response is in helping people who have already been diagnosed to start and stay on treatment. *Check back tomorrow for part 2 of this series. You can also find the complete version of this #InTheSpotlight special briefing as a single page on the Spotlight website. Note: All of the above graphs are based on outputs from version 4.8 of the Thembisa model published in March 2025. We thank the Thembisa team for sharing their outputs so freely. Graphs were produced by Spotlight using the R package ggplot2. You are free to reuse and republish the graphs. For ease of use, you can download them as a Microsoft PowerPoint slide deck. Technical note: The Thembisa model outputs include both stock and flow variables. This is why we have at some places written 2024 (for stock variables) and 2023/2024 (for flow variables). 2024 should be read as mid-2024. 2023/2024 should be read as the period from mid-2023 to mid-2024.
Medscape
23-05-2025
- Health
- Medscape
Generic Version of HIV Drug Recommended for EU
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has given a positive opinion to a generic medicine, emtricitabine/tenofovir alafenamide, for the treatment of adults and adolescents infected with HIV type 1 (HIV-1). The EMA's Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) said that the combination is a generic of the branded medicine Descovy, which has been authorized in the EU since April 21, 2016. The two active substances are antivirals that exert their effects by inhibiting HIV reverse transcriptase through incorporation into the viral DNA, resulting in chain termination. Studies have demonstrated the satisfactory quality of emtricitabine/tenofovir alafenamide, CHMP said, and its bioequivalence to the reference product Descovy. Like Descovy, emtricitabine/tenofovir alafenamide is indicated in combination with other antiretroviral agents for the treatment of adults and adolescents aged 12 years or older with body weight at least 35 kg, who are infected with HIV-1. The drug is an oral medication available as 200 mg/25 mg and 200 mg/10 mg film-coated tablets to be taken once daily. The most common side effects include nausea, diarrhea, headache, dizziness, depression, fatigue, insomnia, strange dreams, stomach pain, weight loss, and rash. Therapy should be initiated by a physician experienced in the management of HIV infection. Detailed recommendations for the use of this product will be described in the summary of product characteristics (SmPC), which will be published on the EMA website in all official European Union languages after the marketing authorization has been granted by the European Commission.
