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DURBAN, South Africa, Jun 08 (IPS) – Africa is tormented by many epidemics — from tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS to malaria and wild polio — however the continent has additionally labored for many years to combat these threats. The important thing to beating these lethal ailments is popping inward to present experience and discovering domestically pushed options.
The current COVID-19 pandemic has positioned public well being again within the international highlight and has additionally served as a reminder that science isn’t undertaken in an ivory tower. Science shapes humanity as a result of it takes place amongst us. COVID-19 has additionally showcased that no epidemic takes place in isolation. By collaboration we will construct on the foundations of our data to deliver ahead revolutionary methods to handle well being challenges that profit all of humanity.
This isn’t a brand new thought. In actual fact, it’s one thing that we turned all too acquainted with in the course of the AIDS pandemic.
Despair, ache, and loss have been rampant in the course of the Eighties and early Nineties, firstly of South Africa’s HIV epidemic. Each weekend, white funeral tents in rural KwaZulu-Natal appeared to mushroom up and multiply, signifying the rising toll the virus was taking up the nation.
Witnessing this helped catalyse me to undertake one of many earliest population-based research that seemed intently at this rising well being concern in South Africa. HIV prevalence was low on the time, with lower than 1% of the inhabitants having been contaminated.
However lurking throughout the knowledge was a stunning revelation: younger girls (15-24 years previous) have been six instances extra more likely to be contaminated in comparison with their male counterparts.
We knew one thing needed to be performed. That meant understanding what had led to this placing disparity in threat. So, we started talking to girls from all components of society to attempt to get a greater sense of what they have been experiencing.
Right here’s what we discovered: energy dynamics of relationships and intercourse have been disrupting illness prevention. Ladies didn’t have the flexibility to guard themselves due to the restricted choices obtainable to them — choices like condoms, that positioned the accountability of lowering threat within the palms of males.
In the meantime, instances continued to surge in South Africa at an alarming fee, doubling yearly within the normal inhabitants.
Current strategies to stop HIV an infection weren’t going to chop it. Approaches designed within the international North have been by no means going to have the ability to totally account for the wants of ladies in Africa. That’s why new options needed to be introduced ahead as a substitute.
A technique that we sought to empower girls was by means of a gel that contained Tenofovir, an antiretroviral (ARV) remedy. This revolutionary method, proven within the CAPRISA 004 trial, enabled HIV-negative girls to guard themselves from the virus. CAPRISA’s analysis on PrEP was not too long ago recognised by the VinFuture Prize as a lifesaving innovation from the worldwide South.
Right this moment, Tenofovir is taken day by day as a capsule for HIV prevention, an answer often known as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). It has been adopted by the World Well being Group (WHO) as a key prevention possibility for each ladies and men.
And it hasn’t stopped there — a spread of recent anti-retroviral medication and long-acting formulations, delivered as injections and implants, are at present being evaluated to increase prevention selections.
AIDS is not a deadly situation, as a substitute it’s persistent but manageable. However we nonetheless see too many deaths and new HIV infections, notably in marginalized populations. Two-thirds of all individuals dwelling with HIV/AIDS are in sub–Saharan Africa and the area accounts for 60% of all new infections.
As we flip our focus in the direction of different pandemics, similar to COVID-19, we can not afford to lose the beneficial properties made in HIV. It’s a lure we fell into earlier than — when early HIV work overshadowed TB efforts — and it’s not one we will afford to be caught in once more.
Even now, COVID-19 continues to attract on classes from the many years of labor which have been poured into our HIV/AIDS response. This contains leveraging present testing instruments to detect COVID, utilising medical trial infrastructure to expedite vaccine growth, calling on group engagement processes to coach the general public, and counting on scientific experience to information governments of their response.
The AIDS pandemic has taught us that scientists, policy-makers, and civil societies can not work in a vacuum. There have to be a unity of goal that galvanises the steadfast assist of worldwide leaders in governments and funding companies the world over.
Africa has the scientific management and mental capital to develop new applied sciences and interventions. That is one thing we’ve proven time and time once more. If there’s a drawback, then native analysis is definitely the most effective path towards discovering an answer.
Pursuing this path of innovation requires funding that can assist and promote the expansion and experience of Africa’s scientists. Our inter-dependency and shared vulnerability underscores the significance of collaboration and resource-sharing each globally and regionally that have to be used for the advantage of humanity. There isn’t any time for complacency. We should be sure that options are tailor-made by native analysis to greatest profit these in want.
Professor Quarraisha Abdool Karim, PhD is an infectious ailments epidemiologist and Affiliate Scientific Director of the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Analysis in South Africa (CAPRISA). She was a 2021 Laureate of the VinFuture Prize, within the ‘Innovators from creating international locations’ class.
© Inter Press Service (2022) — All Rights ReservedAuthentic supply: Inter Press Service
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