Selected to address the challenge is the Center for Infectious Diseases at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine.
The center has received a $1.8 million grant from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Health Resources and Services Administration, a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), and recently has established a demonstration project in UNC Hospitals' Infectious Diseases Outpatient Clinic.
The clinic treats about 1,500 HIV-infected North Carolinians annually. If successful, the project may help shape the approach to HIV outpatient therapy nationally, researchers said.
"Over the last decade or so, and despite extensive preventive efforts targeted at people not infected with HIV, 40,000 new HIV cases are identified in the U.S. annually, a number that has remained somewhat consistent," said Dr. Evelyn Byrd Quinlivan, assistant professor of medicine at UNC and medical director of the infectious diseases clinic.
"This number seems to represent a threshold beyond which no one has been able to move."
In 1999, the CDC requested that the Institute of Medicine, a component of the National Academy of Sciences, form the Committee on HIV Prevention Strategies in the United States.
Among committee members was Dr. Myron S. Cohen, professor of medicine, chief of infectious diseases and director of the Center for Infectious Diseases at UNC. In 2001, Cohen and his colleagues published their recommendations in a book, "No Time to Lose: Getting More from HIV Prevention."
The book's underlying premise is that "each new infection begins with someone who is already infected." Thus, prevention can be enhanced by also targeting the infected in
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Contact: Leslie Lang
llang@med.unc.edu
919-843-9687
University of North Carolina School of Medicine
5-Nov-2003