Most HIV-positive people didn’t pass the virus on to someone else in 2006, suggesting that the prevention efforts are making a difference to stop the spread of the disease, according to a Johns Hopkins researcher.
“Reducing [the transmission rate] even more is going to be challenging, but it’s going to be possible,” said David Holtgrave, chairman of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and lead author of a study published online this week in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.
At least 95 percent of people living with HIV did not transmit the disease in 2006, Holtgrave found. This is a decline from a transmission rate of about 7.5 per 100 in 1997. In the early 1980s the transmission rate was more than 44 percent.
Transmission rates can provide insight on the speed at which the disease is spreading, Holtgrave said. “It tells you that it seems prevention efforts must be paying off to some degree.”
Holtgrave recognized the dip could be attributed to the use of effective anti-retroviral drugs, but added that the rate was declining before those therapies were developed.
In Maryland, the number of new infections has declined slightly in recent years, in part because of efforts to broaden HIV testing, said William Honablew Jr., chief of policy and public information at the Maryland AIDS Administration in the state health department.
State lawmakers eased barriers to HIV testing by passing legislation earlier this year that removed the requirement that people fill out separate written consent forms for an HIV test — a burden for many busy providers and hesitant patients, Honablew said.
“When people know their status, they are less likely to engage in behavior that will transmit [HIV],” he said.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Julie Gerberding recently pointed to the declining transmission rate during a hearing with a House of Representatives oversight committee.
“These declines represent the significant success of our public health efforts to identify HIV infection early through voluntary HIV testing, linking persons who test positive to medical care and prevention services, and the provision of prevention programs to persons who are at risk of contracting HIV,” she said in testimony.
To see the rate decline even further, health care officials and advocates must continue “evidence-based programs we know work,” Holtgrave said.
But this would require the CDC’s prevention budget to skyrocket to $1.3 billion year, up from $750 million, he said.
“It’s a substantial investment,” Holtgrave said, “but the public health benefits would be pretty beneficial.”
[email protected]
