A bizarre news on Women’s Day.
The Guardian Africa has disclosed that VOICE( Vaginal and Oral Interventions to Control the Epidemic) that women ‘refusing to take the HIV Pill or Tablet which could reduce the chances of Contracting HIV Disease.
Is this women’s instinctive feeling that these Pills ot Gel are nothing but a Sales gimmick by Pharma Comapnies?
I think so.
Story by The Guardian, South Africa.
The disappointing results of the Vaginal and Oral Interventions to Control the Epidemic (Voice) trial this week — that most participants had willingly not taken a potentially life-saving anti-HIV pill or used a protective vaginal gel — left researchers with the million-dollar question: Why would young, single African women not take free drugs that could potentially save them from contracting a life-threatening infection?
The Voice study tested whether a daily antiretroviral pill that contained either tenofovir or Truvada (a combination of tenofovir and emtricitabine), or a once-a-day vaginal gel consisting of 1% tenofovir, were effective in protecting South African, Ugandan and Zimbabwean women against HIV infection. Previous studies have shown that the medication shields HIV-negative people from contracting HIV, depending on how regularly they use it.
The American government‘s iPrEx study, conducted among men who have sex with men, found that men who took a daily Truvada pill 90% of the time had a 72.8% lower chance of HIV infection than those who did not take it.
Further, the Partners PrEP study of Washington University revealed that the HIV-negative partners in heterosexual, discordant couples — where one person has the virus and the other one does not — were up to 75% less likely to get infected with HIV if they took a Truvada tablet once a day.
In the Partners PrEP trial, eight out of 10 participants took their drugs correctly, and more than half did so in the iPrEx study. But, in the Voice trial, less than a third of women used their pills consistently and fewer than a quarter used their gel. Single African women younger than 25 were the least likely to use their products and the most likely to contract HIV, the study showed.
The iPrEx and Partners PrEP studies were, however, conducted on different populations — gay men and discordant couples — where the incentive to take the medicine might have been higher, said Kevin Rebe of the Anova Health Institute’s Health4Men clinic in Cape Town.
“When an HIV-negative person is sexually involved with an HIV-infected person, the negative person is likely to perceive his or her risk of getting infected as pretty high which may motivate them to take treatment regularly,” he said.
The “predictability” of someone’s life
According to Rebe, who has five HIV-negative patients on preventative antiretrovirals, the “predictability” of someone’s life closely relates to how well they adhere to their HIV medication regimen.
http://mg.co.za/article/2013-03-08-00-women-confound-hiv-researchers
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