HIV/AIDS

Our story is about a child, who's name is unknown, but was born two years ago with HIV and is now free of the virus. The doctors have not released the name or sex of the child due to protect the baby. The baby is now two and a half years old and is free of the HIV virus and doesn't need to take medicine. Dr. Hannah Gay is the doctor who cared for the child. She was cared for at the University of Mississippi medical center. The baby is cured but its called a "functional cure." That means that after the treatments, they gave the child standard tests and it tested negative but it is possible that the baby may still have some tiny amounts left in their body. Dr. Hannah says, "Now, after at least one year of taking no medicine, this child's blood remains free of virus even on the most sensitive tests available." The baby was at very high risk and doctors are hoping that this approach could lead to the same outcome for other high-risk babies. One main place this is happening is in sub-Saharan Africa. There is around 387,500 kids in Africa who are 14 and under that were getting antiretroviral therapy in 2010. Many of these children were born with the infection. Almost 2 million more children of the same age in this same region are in need of these drugs. In a lot of these cases in Africa, the mother is unaware that she has the virus herself until she tests herself after giving birth. Once she gives birth and finds out she has the virus, she most likely has already passed it on to her new born. During pregnancy there is drugs that the mother can take to reduce risks of the baby having the infection. But since most mothers don't know that they are HIV positive, it then increases the amount of babies that are born with the infection. There is drugs that the new born babies can take to try and get rid of the virus at the early stage but it isn't always guaranteed to get rid of it. So the event that's happening is that mothers in this region are unaware that they are infected with the disease and then pass it on to new borns which is what makes the number of people and children who have it so high. It keeps getting passed onto one another and they don't even know until they are tested.