After the corona vaccination in March 2021, the patient discontinued the antiretroviral medication and has since been considered completely cured. The patient was infected with the HI virus for 31 years, longer than the other people who were able to be completely cured.
Eldest of the fully healed patients
Jana Dickter, an infectious disease specialist at the City of Hope Cancer Center, told AFP he is the oldest of the fully cured HIV patients and his success holds promise for other elderly HIV patients who are also at suffer from cancer.
The reduced-intensity chemotherapy helped the patient and may allow other older HIV patients with cancer to receive treatment, Dickter said. However, it is a complicated treatment with strong side effects that is not an option for most HIV patients.
Fight against AIDS worldwide has stalled
Despite this success, according to a UN report, the fight against AIDS has stalled worldwide. In the past two years – also in view of the corona pandemic and other crises – significantly fewer funds than before were available to fight HIV and AIDS, according to a report published on Wednesday by the UN program for the fight against AIDS ( UNAIDS). In some regions where the number of new infections had previously fallen, they are now rising again; Millions of lives are threatened.
Around 1.5 million people worldwide were newly infected with the HI virus last year. This means that the number of new infections has still fallen compared to the previous year, but only by 3.6 percent – less than at any time since 2016. In Eastern Europe, parts of Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa, among others, the number of new infections has increased. Progress has stalled in East and South Africa. There has been a decline in infections, for example, in West and Central Africa and in the Caribbean.
650,000 people died in 2021 as a result of AIDS
In relative terms, the number of new infections among young women and adolescents was particularly high, the report said. Every two minutes there was a new infection in this group in 2021. In total, more than 38 million people worldwide are now living with HIV. Around 650,000 people died last year as a result of AIDS. “These numbers show that the global fight against AIDS is in jeopardy,” said UNAIDS chief Winnie Byanyima.
From Friday on, thousands of experts and interested parties want to discuss ways and strategies in the fight against the epidemic at the 24th World AIDS Conference in Montreal, Canada. In 2020, the conference only took place digitally due to the corona pandemic, this time there will also be digital offers for the meeting in Montreal. The conference, which was held for the first time in 1985, is considered the world’s largest scientific meeting on the subject of AIDS.