Eighty percent of people with HIV who have been treated with medication have a viral load — a measure of the severity of a viral infection — so low that the virus can no longer be detected, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) said.
The center’s data show that as of the end of last year, the number of people living with HIV in the nation was 20,438, of whom 12,345 are taking medication.
Of those patients who are taking drugs for the virus, 80 percent (9,725) have an undetectable blood viral load, the CDC said, whereas the remaining 20 percent have experienced deterioration of their conditions, a result probably caused by their failure to adhere to antiretroviral therapy.
According to related studies carried out abroad, HIV’s replication, producing approximately 1 billion to 10 billion viral particles every day, is highly error prone and has a high chance of leading to viral mutation, the CDC said.
Failure to take antiretrovirals regularly thus results in failure to suppress viral replication and increases the mutated viruses’ resistance to drug treatment, the CDC said, adding that the likelihood of patients being hit by opportunistic infections would also increase, complicating subsequent treatment.
A program to monitor the effects of Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART) among HIV-infected patients was launched by the center in November last year.
By monitoring medical records, the program aims to locate patients who do not regularly visit their doctor or take antiretroviral drugs and help them devise a schedule tailored to their needs.
The program has the authority to halt National Health Insurance-sponsored medication payments for three months (with the exception of patients who have an urgent clinical need) if a patient who has been consulted still fails to adhere to the therapy for more than six months, the CDC said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching