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Treatment for all: Doctors in
The Health Ministry directive instructs doctors to
catalogue all cases of people infected with HIV or suffering from Aids-related
illnesses and to provide immediate treatment or face an undisclosed punishment.
“Any refusal to accept those infected with the
Aids virus is against the law and because of the social problem that it creates
any violation will be followed up,” the state news agency Irna quoted the
directive, signed by Deputy Health Minister Mohammad Ismael Akbari.
A fighting chance: An experimental vaccine
against SIV, the form of the Aids virus that affects monkeys, sharply reduced
but did not eliminate the virus in the animals’ blood.
The virus in the blood cells of macaques dropped
50-fold and its evidence in plasma fell 1 000-fold in a test that lasted 10
months, said researcher Wei Lu of Rene Descartes University in
Unlike preventive vaccines used to keep people from
catching a disease, this therapeutic vaccine is given to an infected person in
the hope of helping them fight the disease by increasing their immune response.
“This study has opened the possibility of treating
HIV infection using immune cells that have been exposed to a weakened form of
virus,” Lu said.
Source: Sapa