We may finally have the answer to combating the AIDS crisis.
Yesterday, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first ever drug shown to reduce the risk of HIV infection.
The agency approved Gilead Sciences’ pill Truvada to be a preventive measure for healthy people who are at high risk of acquiring HIV through sexual activity. This includes those who have HIV infected partners, but have not contracted HIV themselves.
The approval of Truvada comes less than 2 weeks after the FDA approved the landmark first over-the-counter HIV test that can be conducted at home.
The 2 new developments are seen as the biggest and perhaps most successful steps in the decades long fight to curb the spread of HIV. In the U.S., HIV has held steady at about 50,000 new infections per year for the last 15 years. An estimated 1.2 million Americans have HIV, which develops into AIDS unless treated with antiviral drugs. Also, an estimated 240,000 HIV carriers are unaware that they are infected.
Truvada will only be made available to those in extremely high risk groups, such as gay and bisexual men, or men or women with an HIV infected partner.
For obvious reasons THIS is great news!….and it appears NOT a minute too soon….and on a somewhat related note (DJ, I hope you don't mind?)……..I couldn't care less if a person is BI-sexual. Just be UP FRONT about it. DECEPTION costs lives. BI-sexual men AND women living on the *DOWN-LOW* are playing a dangerous game! This story is really lighting up some blogs…."Florida Lt. Governor: "Usually black women that look like me’ aren’t lesbians"Florida’s Lt. Governor Jennifer Carroll tried to deflect questions about an alleged same sex relationship with a staffer by saying women who look like her “don’t engage in relationships like that.”Ex-office aide, Carletha Cole said that she was fired shortly after she witnessed Carroll and a female staffer in “what can only be described as a compromising position,” according excerpts of the complaint published by Reuters.“My husband doesn’t want to hear that. He knows the type of woman I am for 29 years. I’m… Read more »