Excerpt
SUMMARY: An ambitious new plan in San Francisco aims to completely end the transmission of HIV, which infects about 50,000 people every year nationwide. In a city where huge strides have already been made in battling the epidemic, public health officials, doctors and activists are increasing their efforts to bring the number of new HIV infections down to zero. NewsHour's John Carlos Frey reports.
JOHN CARLOS FREY (NewsHour): At Ward 86, a bustling outpatient HIV clinic at San Francisco General Hospital, nurse Diane Jones drops everything when this pager goes off.
It means that someone in the city just tested HIV positive.
DIANE JONES: So, I’m going to make him an appointment.
Jones is following a protocol called ‘RAPID’ which is designed to get new HIV positive individuals into treatment immediately.
DIANE JONES: Just got diagnosed today, last negative was June.
JOHN CARLOS FREY: Jones scrambles to make plans for the new patient who is seen just hours later.
It’s part of an ambitious plan in San Francisco to completely end new HIV infections.
Each year about 50,000 people in the United States are infected with HIV. And while the disease has moved off the front pages as treatment has made infection more of a manageable chronic condition, an estimated 13,700 people still die from AIDS in the U.S. each year.
Globally, an estimated 1.5 million people are killed. It’s the 6th leading cause of death.
In San Francisco there are relatively few new HIV infections — 359 in 2013 and overwhelmingly found in gay men. It’s a number that has been falling over the past eight years. But new infections haven’t gone away.
Today, public health officials, doctors, and activists are increasing their efforts to bring that number all the way down to zero.
No comments:
Post a Comment