HIV-infected people regularly using ART medicine live a normal life: experts

Hundreds of people infected with HIV in Pakistan are living a normal and healthy life, even a better life than patients of some other infectious diseases –- thanks to the antiretroviral (ART) medicines which suppress the virus to an extent where it becomes undetectable and does not transmit to others, infectious diseases experts said on Tuesday.

“There is a concept in HIV treatment, which is called U=U, which means that when ART therapy or medicines result in viral suppression, defined as less than 200 copies/ml or undetectable levels, it prevents sexual HIV transmission,” Dr Faisal Mehmood, infectious diseases expert associated with the Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH), told journalists at a training workshop in Karachi.

The two-day interactive training, ‘Role of the Media in Strengthening HIV Response’, was organised by the UNAIDS in collaboration with the CDC Directorate of the Sindh Health Department, UNFPA and the health committee of the Karachi Press Club (KPC), which was attended by journalists from local, regional and international media to discuss sensitive reporting on the issues of HIV and AIDS, population, gender-based violence and sexually transmitted diseases.

Dr Mehmood said people infected with HIV were even able to marry non-infected people, adding that with the help of antiretroviral medicines, not only did their spouses remain uninfected, but the children born to them also were free of HIV infection.

“I treated a young lady who was found to be infected with HIV. After treatment, she married a person who was not infected, with his consent. They now have children and both the husband and children are not infected. The family is living a happy, healthy life,” he said, claiming that nowadays nobody dies of HIV infection if they continue to take antiretroviral medicines, which are provided free of charge in Sindh.

Dr Mahmood maintained that although HIV infection was a sexually transmitted disease, it is also being transmitted through the reuse of syringes and poor infection prevention and control, as in the case of Ratodero, where hundreds of children got infected with HIV due to criminal negligence of quacks, who reused syringes and needles to inject drugs to them.

Urging the media not to sensationalise the HIV issue, he cited the example of Covid-19 which was used to be considered as a lethal disease, but now people were treating it like an ordinary disease. He added that HIV infection was also treated as a normal disease in the US and other parts of the West.

To a query as to why there was no vaccine against HIV prevention, he said that unlike the coronavirus, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) becomes a part of the infected person’s DNA so it becomes very difficult to remove it from the DNA while it has scores of variants, which is making it immensely difficult to come up with a vaccine against it.

Two transgender persons from the Gender Interactive Alliance (GIA), Zehrish Khanzadi and Mazhar Anjum, shared their experiences. Mazhar Anjum, an HIV positive person from the transgender community, said he was living a normal life with the help of ART therapy after getting infected some 15 years back.

United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Deputy Representative in Pakistan Dr Bakhtior Kadyrov urged the journalists to highlight the issue of the growing population in Pakistan from the rights perspective, warning that if the population issue was not addressed, the country’s population was expected to get doubled in the next 30 years.

Other UNFAP officials, including Mariyam Nawaz, also urged the journalists to write on population issues, including low prevalence of modern contraceptives in Pakistan and the right

of women to decide the number of children in their families.

UNAIDS Community Support Adviser Fahmida Khan, Strategic Information Advisor Dr Rajwal Khan and Additional Director, Communicable Diseases Control (CDC) Directorate Sindh Dr Ershad Kazmi also spoke.