HIV pilot scheme in North
AHEAD of the World Aids Day today, French virologist Francoise Barre Sinoussi, who won the 2008 Nobel prize for her part in the 1983 discovery of HIV, France's Institute of Research for Development (IRD) and Chiang Mai University's Faculty of Associated M
The “Nab Neung” (Counting one to begin) scheme aims to find treatments for HIV, Hepatitis B and C, and syphilis and allow people better access to testing. Under this pilot project, tests for HIV, Hepatitis B and C, and syphilis will be provided free of charge at the facility’s clinic to 1,500 Thais and migrant workers over the age of 15 from targeted at-risk groups in the North over a three-year period.
Sinoussi also gave a lecture titled “From discovery to remaining challenges in HIV science”. Praising the success by people in medical science and associated fields for treating 80 per cent of people living with HIV worldwide, she urged more attempts to cover the remaining 20 per cent and to minimise the number of HIV-positive people via anti-HIV medicine developments.
Faculty dean Wassana Sirirangsi cited a previous report that 500,000 Thais live with HIV and two million Thai adults contracted Hepatitis B and C. She quoted the Public Health Ministry as saying that over 40 per cent of people with HIV did not know they have the disease.
IRD’s project director Gonzague Jourdian urged the public to understand that HIV, Hepatitis B and C, and syphilis were treatable, saying people with positive test results would be treated properly though a process of learning and understanding the disease by both researchers and patients.
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