Regarding treatment with HIV right now, we have a lot of good science.
We’ve gone from days in the 80’s and 90’s where people had to take multiple pills, two or three times a day.
Now we have multiple medication regimens where it’s only one pill, once a day. So it’s very similar to like high blood pressure, diabetes treatment where you can take one pill, one a day, once a day and be done with it.
Where we’re lagging is the social science aspect of it. So we have all these great scientific advancements, but we haven’t really caught up socially to deal with some of the social issues that people deal with. So homelessness, food insecurity, not being able to pay your rent, poverty, lack of education, access to care, insurance, all these kind of other things play a role and it doesn’t matter at some point when the science is so good if we can’t get people on the medications to begin with.
Dr. David Malebranche, MD, MPH, a clinician-researcher specializing in HIV, gives the lowdown on all things HIV care and treatment in the latest installment of the #AskTheHIVDoc video series.
