Open AccessAIDS: How Do We Overcome This Social or Biodisaster?
Author(s) -
Tsutomu Murakami,
Naoki Yamamoto
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
journal of disaster research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.332
H-Index - 18
eISSN - 1883-8030
pISSN - 1881-2473
DOI - 10.20965/jdr.2007.p0071
Subject(s) - human immunodeficiency virus (hiv) , antiretroviral therapy , intensive care medicine , medicine , virology , immunology , viral load
Some 40 million people in the world now live with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). The introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) has dramatically reduced AIDS mortality in developed countries, but problems with HAART itself, such as side effects and the emergence of the drug-resistant viruses. Despite tremendous effort to develop either a preventive or therapeutic AIDS vaccine, no effective ones have emerged despite promising candidate anti-HIV drugs as a back up for HAART. Given that, although not a curable, AIDS is preventable and controllable, it is urgent to disseminate effective HIV prevention and treatment to the virus-infected people all over the world in order to stop the global AIDS epidemic as soon as possible.