H.I.V Online Clinic

01/12/2021

25/04/2021

Is SARS COVID19 vaccine safe for PLWHA. Yes it's safe unless you are nursing mother, pregnant and very ill.

06/08/2020

You can now be able to get private zoom consultation

02/08/2020

What is an undetectable viral load?

An undetectable viral load is where antiretroviral treatment (ART) has reduced your HIV to such small quantities that it can no longer be detected by standard blood tests. People living with HIV who have an undetectable viral load cannot pass HIV on through s*x.

Being undetectable does not mean your HIV is cured. There is still HIV in your body, although it has been reduced to very small amounts. This means that if you stop taking treatment, your viral load will increase – affecting your health and making HIV transmittable again.



How will I know if I am undetectable?

You can’t tell if you have an undetectable viral load simply by how healthy you look and feel. The only way to know that your viral load is undetectable is by regular viral load monitoring.

Viral load monitoring involves a simple blood test to measure how many particles of HIV there are in a small sample of your blood (otherwise stated as how many HIV copies per mililitre of blood). From this you and your healthcare worker can understand how well your ART is working.

A low viral load means that your ART is working well and controlling your HIV. If you have an undetectable viral load, it means that the amount of HIV in your body is so low that it is non-infectious to other people.

The point at which a viral load is classified as being undetectable may vary across different countries depending on the tests available. But so long as your viral load is under 200 copies per millilitre, you’re considered virally suppressed and unable to pass HIV on.

The frequency with which you are offered viral load testing may vary depending on where you are and the services available to you. The World Health Organization recommends that when first starting ART, you should have your viral load measured after the first 6 months of treatment and again at 12 months. After becoming undetectable you should still receive viral load testing at least every 12 months. Depending on the resources available and your particular health status, your health worker may recommend that your viral load is monitored more often than this.

Some people may not have access to viral load tests, unfortunately this means that they cannot know if they’re undetectable. Your healthcare workers will still work with you to ensure that your HIV is managed and that you stay in good health. You will need to continue using condoms, PrEP or other forms of HIV protection to ensure that HIV is not passed on to your s*xual partners.



What will being undetectable mean for me?

Having an undetectable viral load means that your ART is effectively controlling your HIV. This will protect your immune system and help you to stay in good health.

Being undetectable also means that you don’t have to worry about passing HIV onto your s*xual partners. For many people this is just as important to them, giving them relief from the anxiety of passing HIV on. Some people find that knowing they’re undetectable makes it easier to share their HIV status with others, as it can be reassuring for others to know that your health is protected and you can’t pass it on too.

Do I still need to use condoms if I’m undetectable?

Some couples decide that they want to stop using condoms once they or their partner are undetectable. It’s important to remember that although there’s no HIV risk, being undetectable doesn’t prevent you from getting or passing on other s*xually transmitted infections (STIs) or stop unwanted pregnancies, so you will have to use other measures to avoid these.

If you do stop using condoms, it’s important that both you and your partner are comfortable with the decision. It can help to talk it through with a healthcare worker first. It’s recommended that you have a least two viral load tests confirming that you’re undetectable before relying on this for HIV prevention. If your partner is HIV-negative they may consider using PrEP as an extra precaution.

In couples where both partners are living with HIV, it’s important that you are both undetectable before deciding not to use condoms. This is because if one partner has a different strain of HIV or has developed drug resistance this can be passed on if they have a detectable viral load.



Can my viral load continue to change?



Yes, your viral load can continue to change. This would usually be a result of factors to do with your adherence (whether you are taking your pills at the right times and in the right way), or other health issues. Regular viral load monitoring will help you stay on top of these changes, so you can manage your health accordingly.

Your viral load usually drops quickly after first starting treatment, however it may be a while before it reaches a point where it’s undetectable. Most people who adhere properly to their treatment become undetectable after about six months, but it’s important that you have a viral load test to confirm this.

While changes to viral load can occur, they should be relatively uncommon for people who adhere properly to their medication and are otherwise in good health. Your viral load monitoring appointments are there to help you to identify and respond to any changes in your viral load.

These appointments also give you time to discuss any difficulties you are having with your medication. Often big life changes, like starting a new relationship or moving to a new place, can make adherence more difficult. Your healthcare worker can help you with any new challenges and work with you to stay healthy and keep your viral load low.

Can everyone living with HIV achieve an undetectable viral load?

Although being virally suppressed and undetectable is the aim of HIV treatment for everyone, there are some reasons why a person may not be able to achieve an undetectable viral load. These can include factors outside of someone’s control, for example:

Drug interactions

Side effects

Adherence challenges

Other health issues

For some people, it might be tricky to find a treatment regime that agrees with them. While in some places, viral load testing may not always be readily available.

If this is the case for you, it’s essential that you still take your medication exactly as prescribed and that you keep regular appointments with your healthcare team. While you may not be ‘undetectable’, you can still remain healthy and your healthcare workers will still work with you to help you have the best treatment outcomes possible.

Does being undetectable mean you can’t pass HIV on through pregnancy, breastfeeding or sharing injecting equipment?

At the moment we cannot say that there is zero risk of transmitting HIV through pregnancy, breastfeeding or sharing injecting equipment for people with undetectable viral loads. The evidence we have for U=U only applies to s*xual transmission at this time.

Although we know that having an undetectable viral load will radically reduce the risk of passing HIV on by any route, it’s likely that for injecting drugs and breastfeeding the risk will not be zero.

Nevertheless, many women without access to clean water and affordable formula feed are still advised to breastfeed. For their babies breastfeeding is still the safest option to avoid the more dangerous risks of diarrhoeal disease and malnutrition. So long as they adhere to their medication the risk of HIV transmission will be very low.

If you are unsure what the advice is for you or have any concerns about HIV transmission, you should speak to your healthcare worker.

07/02/2020

Do you know what is PREP?

02/08/2019

Kenyan scientist who could develop Hiv-Aids cure



What are you doing about HIV/AIDs?

My experiences with patients living with HIV/AIDS made me re-examine my career goals and sparked my strong interest in HIV therapeutics. My research topic was on Long-Acting Slow Effective Release Antiretroviral Therapy (Laser Art).

The aim of my research is to create sequential long-acting slow-effective release antiviral therapy to facilitate HIV and hepatitis B prevention and treatment strategies. This work has now led to the first cure of HIV in an animal model of human infection and could provide lifesaving cures for millions of human patients around the world.

We are also developing imaging technologies that would allow us to visualise disease spread and distribution of medicines into different parts of the body without the need for performing surgical procedures. Such technologies will enable the development of better treatments.

What were the challenges you encountered during the research?

My ideas were rejected since I was proposing to do the opposite of what many had been doing in the field for decades. I persisted and reduced them into experiments. To make the long story short, the ideas are now a foundation of our research program and are a part of the first cure of HIV infection in an animal model of the disease. I also hold 13 US patent applications on the same ideas.

Compared to ARVs, how effective is Laser Art?

While regular ARVs have been successful in controlling HIV replication, the virus is able to hide in tissues and cells where most of these medicines have limited access. Laser Art is designed to deliver effective amounts of medicines into inaccessible parts of the body. It also simplifies medicine administrations and as such reduces viral transmission, prevent new infections, and limit the emergence of viral drug resistance and systemic toxicities/side effects.

For instance, regular ARVs require patients to take 365 doses a year. Laser Art will enable two doses or a single dose a year.

Perhaps of most significance is our collaborative work is demonstrating the first complete elimination of HIV-1 in a humanised mouse model of the disease using a combination of Laser Art and gene editing technologies.

What can the Kenyan universities learn from western universities?

We need continuous investment in research and development as theoretical knowledge-based learning alone will not solve our problems. We have some of the best minds at our local universities, who need support from the government to promote innovation and economic growth.


What sparked your interest in medicinal chemistry?

After completing my high school studies at Mbale High School, I enrolled in an undergraduate degree in chemistry at Moi University, Chepkoilel Campus (currently University of Eldoret) in 2005 and later a Masters in chemistry from the same university.

As I was finalising my Masters coursework, one of my lecturers, who is also now my mentor, Prof Samuel Lutta encouraged me to apply for a PhD programme abroad that is how I ended up at Louisiana State University (LSU) in the United States.

My interest in medicinal chemistry had begun when I was an undergraduate student, but unfortunately, there was limited scientific research at our local institutions. Joining LSU was one of the biggest turning points in my training. Not only did LSU fund my PhD studies, but I was also afforded an opportunity to train in a collaborative multi-cultural environment with state-of-the-art laboratory facilities.

What does medicinal chemistry entail and how important is it?

Medicinal chemistry encompasses development of new medicines that improve and eventually save lives. It is a field that merges many scientific disciplines such as biological and pharmaceutical sciences.

What was your experience studying in the US?

There are major differences between the programs in the US and the Kenyan ones. I found that the ones abroad offer high-quality graduate-level training to students that prepares them for life beyond college. There is also a lot of investment in research.

Some of the courses, like the one you studied are being scrapped because of their lack of competitiveness in the market. How do you feel about this?

Change is good, but we need to ask ourselves what have we done or are doing to promote and/or strengthen teaching, research and development in our local universities. There are many challenges that could be transformed into opportunities to provide local solutions and create jobs. Scrapping off the courses alone will not solve our problems.

The good news is that we have competent and qualified faculty members at our local institutions, who require proper tools to improve the quality of education offered at our universities

07/10/2018

The new powder form ARVS for children will go a long way to make treatment easy for children. The formula awaits node from the FDA

09/06/2018

ARVS do not prevent pregnancy ,condom does .

16/05/2018

Its good to use condoms as prep do not prevent pregnancy

06/04/2018

GOOD MEN EXIST
Would you marry someone if they told you they were living with HIV? Most people, the answer would be a “NO!” But this hasn’t been the case of Emmanuel Adipo who has been married twice and was aware of his wives’ HIV status GG^^°met him with his current wife, Hilda Akoth and they shared their love story.

Emmanuel Adipo with his wife Hilda
When Emmanuel Adipo, 32 married his first wife, he was all set for the proverbial happily-ever-after marriage. His wife was living in the village in Siaya County while he was working as a mason in Nairobi. The young couple had looked forward to raising a happy family. The two had visualized how they would have children and had even planned that he would relocate his family to Nairobi so that their children would grow up under the care of both parents. But that was never to be. Adipo’s wife lost her uterus to a miscarriage when she was pregnant with her first baby. As if that was not enough, she also tested positive for HIV.

“It hurt me deeply as I went to sign the consent form for the surgery to remove the uterus,” Adipo says and adds that despite the inability to have children and his wife living with HIV, he was willing to stand by her for better or for worse. “Who am I to laugh at another person’s misfortune or criticize their failures?” he kept asking himself.

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Losing the uterus dealt her a shattering blow and like Adipo says, she seemed to be blaming herself for what had befallen them. However much as Adipo tried to console her, she became withdrawn, cranky and irritable and would often pick unnecessary quarrels with everyone including Adipo’s mother.

This attitude led to protracted disagreements and Adipo thought that having a baby in the family would perhaps ease her tantrums. He also desired to have his own child so he sold her the idea of getting a second wife so they could have children.

But she categorically refused to share her husband and opted to leave. Adipo would later get married again and graciously he and his new bride tested negative for HIV. Their stay was however short-lived because from what Adipo thinks was incitements from neighbours, his wife tricked him that she had gone to visit her family but never returned. They already had a son so Adipo suspects that people had told her about his first wife’s HIV status and she got frightened.

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Adipo says that he wasn’t shocked or frightened when he got the news that his first wife had tested positive for HIV and wondered why his second wife would be cowed by gossip yet they had already been tested and they were negative. He waited miserably as days turned into weeks then months but his second wife and son didn’t return. It was at the highest point of desperation that "I met Hilda who has outsmarted my other two wives by far!”

Though Hilda is also living with HIV, Adipo says that she is the best gift that life has given him. The couple says that for the ten years they have been together, love and trust have been the foundation on which their marriage is built. They have three children but the first two are from Hilda’s first marriage.

Hilda’s life has not been without its own dark shadows and she explains that if it were not for the love that binds her and her husband, her journey living with HIV would have been intolerable.

Hilda had met Adipo at a time when life had been so cruel to her. Her husband of four years had died while undergoing TB treatment. She recalls how he had started ailing and had been put on TB treatment as soon as he was diagnosed.

One day he came from work and lay on the couch but never woke up. Her husband’s family was pressuring Hilda to go back to the village with an agenda to have her remarried but she had declined. Hilda would never have imagined that her husband had been infected with HIV because he had only complained of chest pains. Besides, the doctors didn’t inform her about anything else apart from that her husband had pulmonary TB and would be on medication for six months.

Everything was happening so fast when Hilda’s husband died and as she explains she didn’t know where she and her children would start without his moral and even financial support.

“Thankfully, my two children are now in school and this year, the first born will be sitting KCPE," she says. Hilda recounts how she did laundry and other house chores in order to feed her children and pay house rent.

ALSO READ: Maria confesses: ‘I was forced to slaughter, cook fat snakes in Saudi Arabia’

“My goal was to keep my children well fed and comfortable,” she says, adding that meeting Adipo was a miracle because she needed someone understanding and responsible to talk to. The couple recounts how they met and became friends but it didn’t take long before they started dating. During their courtship, Hilda says they were romantically intimate.

Hilda would not have known her HIV status if she had not been invited to a seminar and after the workshop, some of the participants toyed with the idea of getting tested for HIV. It was then, to her dismay, that she discovered she was HIV-positive. “In my heart of hearts, I was very worried that I had infected Adipo who was then my boyfriend yet I had to disclose the results to him,” she says and adds that she wanted to make him aware of her status so that he would make an informed decision if he wanted to go ahead and get married to her.

It saddened Hilda that she would lose Adipo because according to her, he was and is still the kindest soul she has ever met. “It puzzles me how many men in discordant relationships would go to collect anti-retroviral drugs for their wives in public health facilities the way Adipo does,” she says. She says that Adipo walks with her to the health facility where they meet many people who know him but he has never shied away.

Adipo remembers the moment Hilda broke the news to him and how she had asked him to go with her for a confirmation test. “I assured her that whatever the results, my love for her was intact and our plans to move in together would not be foiled,” he says. When they went for the test, it was amazing that he was negative. They have since gone for several tests in different places but Adipo is still negative.

The two love-birds moved in shortly after the test with Adipo pledging to fully support Hilda and her children. Hilda started taking ARVs immediately. They were advised to embrace protected s*x, an advice they obeyed to the letter. When they desired to expand their family, Adipo was put on Post Exposure Prophylaxis and their daughter was conceived. The girl is now seven years old and HIV-negative.

Adipo acknowledges that there are more serious illnesses a person can have hence he would never have abandoned his wife because of her HIV status. “There are some medical practitioners who say that perhaps I am resistant to HIV while others believe it is the grace of God. In all this, Adipo affirms that his greatest desire is to love his wife and their children and give her all the support. The couple disclosed Hilda’s HIV status to the children and they are equally very supportive.

“They remind her to take her medication especially on the days she is busy,” Adipo says, adding that apart from the normal common illnesses, Hilda has never had a serious opportunistic infection. He points that he is proud of his wife because she is hard-working and has never allowed her status to put her down. “I do all kinds of jobs including painting,” Hilda interjects and adds that she is also a peer educator.

Adipo encourages couples not to make HIV a ground for separation or divorce because he is a living testimony that discordant couples can be happy. On s*x, he says some men think that protected s*x isn’t exciting but affirms that if someone is in love, protected s*x can be enjoyable.

“Enjoying s*x is in the mind. A partner has to choose if they want to enjoy it or not with or without protection,” he says.