Sarah Arnquist

Sarah Arnquist started a discussion "Expanded HIV treatment and prevention in South Africa" in the Adherence & Retention community.

Starting tomorrow, April 1, South Africa is launching new guidelines for HIV prevention and treatment. It will start incorporating the new WHO guidelines that say to initiate treatment at a CD4 count of 350 instead of the current practice starting at CD4 of 200. There are other recommendations related to pregnancy and TB. See a blog post i wrote about it posted on the globalhealthdelivery.org home page. From what people have told me most patients ...

Sarah Arnquist started a discussion "Treatment as prevention??" in the HIV Prevention community.

Several recent headlines have touted massive expansions of HIV testing and antiretroviral treatment as effective means to prevent disease transmission. Dr. Brian Williams suggested in the (Guardian) that blanket testing and massive expansion of ARV treatment (on the BBC) should be considered for prevention. A vaccine is still a long way off, Williams said, but ARVs now are available and can reduce someone’s viral load by so much they “they become close to non-infectious.” Dr. ...

Sarah Arnquist started a discussion "herd immunity and HIV" in the Adherence & Retention community.

Hello, I'm working on a paper with a colleague and we seem to have differing understandings of "herd immunity" and how it applies to HIV. She is using the term to describe the reduced risk of HIV infection because overall levels of HIV infection in a community are lower. To me that didn't seem like herd immunity, which I thought had to do with the group's overall resistance. If anyone could further explain if/how herd ...

Sarah Arnquist replied to "herd immunity and HIV" in the Adherence & Retention community.

Thanks for such a quick response Phillip!

Sarah Arnquist started a discussion "What is the level of complementarity between treatment and prevention?" in the HIV Prevention community.

Aidwatchers.com is discussing the failures of HIV prevention. But i thought Easterly's viewpoint was worth discussing here. Would love to get some community reaction, particularly as it relates to our work on looking at how to maximize value at strategies to operate prevention efforts at optimal scale. We're creating a value chain framework for HIV prevention strategy and including treatment as an integral component to maximizing value generation for patients. We're saying it's necessary to ...