myHIN Blog

March 13, 2013

So What’s The Real Deal Here?!

Just a little over a week ago, when the story broke about the baby being cured of HIV infection; that was all anyone talked about for days! It was the lead story on all sources of media: television, radio, newspaper, Twitter, Facebook, etc. At first there was elation and hope that a cure had really been found; and then there was speculation and doubt that there ever was an HIV infection to be cured! I guess this usually happens with any HUGE discovery like the earth being round, the law of gravity, the rise of drug addiction in the urban black community due to Hoover’s subversive tactics; oh no, wait, that would be a conspiracy, wouldn’t it? Anyway…

So as we began to follow this story about the miraculous cure for HIV infection in this baby, and in Mississippi (!); we find that this medical event occurred in 2010, and that the baby is now 2.5 years old and free of HIV infection after being ‘functionally cured’ (first word left out of headlines for days). This means no traces of replicating HIV cells can be found even if a small amount of the virus remains in the body. The baby had been born prematurely after the mother (who didn’t know she was HIV positive until after the birth) had come to the hospital in labor and was determined to have been infected in the womb, which is seen as rare in the United States, rather than during delivery. At 30 hours old, the baby was sent to the University of Mississippi Medical Center, where Dr. Hannah Gay aggressively treated the baby (if really infected) before the virus had an opportunity to take hold to destroy the immune system. As everyone was speculating what this possible cure could mean to the world, Dr. Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases pointed out that “adults typically don’t know they are infected right as it happens.” Early detection and aggressive treatment were credited with the cure for the baby.

The doctor who treated the infant at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, called a doctor at the University of Massachusetts, who happened to be working on a project to document possible pediatric cures, sponsored by the Foundation for AIDS Research. It was this last group of doctors that reported the findings on the baby at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections on March 3rd. The findings were deemed particularly significant to the chief of global pediatric infectious disease at the University of California, Los Angeles, because of its implications for women in South African and other African countries, as well as many developing countries where women are less likely to be treated during pregnancy and babies born to infected women are generally not tested until after six weeks.

Being involved in the myHealthImpactNetwork.org project has shaded my perception of all the attention given by the media to the baby’s cure, functional or true. My attention focused on the United Nations’ report of the newly infected 330,000 babies in 2011and wondered how many of these infections happened because the mother, as the mother of the cured baby, did not know she was HIV Positive. You can argue about whether the baby was cured or not, but it seems to be that it is just as important to explore how the baby was at risk of HIV infection, in the first place! It seems like such a simple thing: take a simple test! Why is this such a difficult thing to do?! Yet it must be difficult or there would not be over three million children living with HIV infection in the world today! My grandparents taught me that ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’! It doesn’t diminish the significance of the cure but to lick this thing we have to make both ends meet the middle. We can’t stop focusing on prevention because of the excitement of the possibility of a cure.

This website encourages and provides easy access to information for a woman to seek HIV testing. What about you? Have you been tested? When was the last time you were tested? If you have never been tested and you are sexually active, I’d like to know what stops you from getting tested?

References:
Andrew Pollack and Donald G. McNeil, Jr. In Medical First, a Baby with H.I.V. is Deemed Cured. The New York Times, March 3, 2013

Sydney Lupkin. Experts Question So-Called HIV ‘Cure’. ABC News. March 6, 2013

Terrance Friday. Baby Cured of HIV has Medical Professionals Hopeful. www.KLTV.com/story/21565370/baby-cured-.... March 9, 2013