American People Sponsor Antiretroviral Therapy Conference

On August 22, the United States President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) hosted a conference at the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) office in Dar es Salaam titled “ART Controversies and Challenges: When to Start, What to Start?” The session was designed to review the state-of-the-art of two of the major questions in antiretroviral therapy (ART): when to start therapy and what regimens to start. 

Though not a cure, ART is a treatment for HIV/AIDS which can increase life expectancy and reduce opportunistic infections.  Recent studies have also shown that ART also reduces the likelihood of transmission of the virus and contributes to prevention.

During the recorded presentation, Dr Paul Sax MD, Clinical Director of the HIV Program, Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts highlighted the significant progress made in the fight against HIV/AIDS.  

Since its introduction, ART viral suppression rate, which is the ability of drug's therapy to suppress the virus, has risen from 37% in 1996 to 87% in 2010.  This improvement was made possible to drug advances that include introduction of new and less toxic ART drugs and improved treatment options.  In addition, a 2011 Treatment as Prevention study determined that an HIV-infected person who begins treatment early reduces the risk of transmission by up to 96%.

It was these advances which led to a consensus among the speakers and was best summarized by Dr Sax when he said "The answer to the question of when to start is when we can".  The speakers agreed that even though early intervention can have a huge impact on containing the disease, availability of financial and human resources for implementation must also be considered in the debate of when to initiate treatment and which combination of drugs to use and those factors will vary from country to country.

The conference included a recorded video from the International AIDS 2012 conference held in Washington DC during July and a question and answer session conducted by a panel of experts which consisted of Dr. Richard Banda Medical Officer with WHO in Tanzania, and Dr. Patrick R. Swai, Senior Program Management Specialist (HIV) USAID.

In his remarks, Dr. Patrick R. Swai, lauded PEPFAR's partnership with Tanzanians combating HIV/AIDS, and noted: "As Ambassador Alfonso E. Lenhardt has said, the progress we have seen with the American people working together with PEPFAR partners breeds optimism for Tanzania's future.  The success we’ve achieved so far gives us hope that we can achieve an AIDS-free generation in Tanzania."

In Tanzania, PEPFAR works with the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare and the Global Fund to provide life-saving ARV treatment for more than 300,000 men, women and children, and provide care and support for more than 1.2 million Tanzanians, including more than 360,000 orphans and vulnerable children.