06/18/2012
HIV Fading as a Health Threat, but Not Gone
GDNS features Dr. Charles Shafer of Falls Community Health.
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. - Wednesday, June 27, is HIV National Testing day, also a reminder that HIV continues to be a public health threat.
Falls Community Health in Sioux Falls received a grant from the South Dakota Department of Health for HIV prevention services. Dr. Charles Shafer, Falls Community Medical Director, says that, despite the level of new infections falling off, more people are living with HIV.
"We still see the same number of people getting infected every year in this country, and combine that with the treatments that are incredibly more effective, and you have more and more people living longer with HIV. So the cumulative number of people living with this disease in this country and in South Dakota continues to rise year by year significantly."
The state Department of Health reports that there were 665 people diagnosed with HIV in South Dakota in 2011. Dr. Shafer says HIV survival rates have increased dramatically.
"It used to be kind of a cancer. We would think of it as a terminal cancer model, where if you got diagnosed with HIV you were going to die, pretty much no matter what. That was true 20 years ago or a little more, but now it's more of a what we call a chronic disease model, where people, if they take their meds appropriately, which most people can do, they essentially have the same life span as anybody else who is not infected."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that about one million people in the U.S. are infected with HIV, and they estimate about 20 percent are unaware of their conditions.
Dr. Shafer says they are working with a control method called "Prevention through Positive."
"Which means trying to get as many people that we know have HIV treated successfully, to reduce the risk that they present to other people. It's kind of a no-brainer, but everybody who gets infected obviously gets it from somebody who has it. So if we can treat those folks who have it, the more of those folks we can treat, the lower the risk."
Falls Community Health has free, rapid HIV testing the second and fourth Mondays of each month, with results available in 20 minutes.
Jerry Oster, Public News Service - SD
