Only two have recovered from AIDS since Freddie Mercury’s death – Part 2

Before the coronavirus, the spread of AIDS, an acquired immune deficiency syndrome, kept the world in a fever. Since the virus was identified in 1981, about 80 million have been infected and about 40 million have died from the disease.

The first patient to recover from HIV is in Berlin Timothy Brown was also treated for cancer and then declared virus-free three and a half years later. Brown In the case of stem cell transplantation, stem cell transplantation prevented the HIV virus from multiplying within the body, as the patient’s immune cells were replaced by resistant immune cells from donors.

The manager of the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team, Earvin „Magic” Johnsont He was diagnosed in 1991 as HIV positive. He retired for four years due to the intensive treatment of the American sports legend, returned for a season in 1996, and then retired permanently. He is over 60 working as an ambassador for the fight against AIDS and safe sex.

Photo: 123rf

Domestic situation: 35 years of AIDS testing experience

In Hungary, AIDS data are completely different and much simpler. Almost every patient in the country sexually catches the virus, and even usually knows exactly from whom and when they became infected. It is possible to know exactly about the infected people in Hungary that the high number of partners and unprotected sexual intercourse causes the disease.

This is because AIDS spreads through the mucous membranes, that is, through body fluids such as blood, semen, vaginal secretions or breast milk. In the eighties, however, infections are still common during blood transfusions, but the killer disease can be passed on through an infected needle, mother and baby during pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding, or if any of these body fluids come in contact with a mucous or skin injury. .

According to the website of the National Center for Public Health, there are currently 4,136 HIV-positive patients registered in Hungary, the majority of whom (3,197 people) are men, while 394 women and 545 infected sexes are unknown (due to the anonymous AIDS test).

Thus, the number of patients in Hungary is almost 50 percent higher in 2020 than the total of 2,845 HIV-infected people registered between 1985 and 2014, however, this can also be explained by the late start of testing and the lack of anonymity until 1991. While twenty years ago, only 50 to 60 people became infected each year, in 2019, more than 200 new HIV infections were diagnosed. The sad data includes the fact that almost half of those newly registered are already in the care system at the stage of AIDS, when treatments may be much less effective.

Twice as many have been infected in Eastern Europe in ten years

According to the latest annual report of the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) In 2018, 26,164 people were diagnosed with the AIDS virus in 31 countries in the WHO European Region. This means 5.6 new AIDS infections per 100,000 inhabitants.

In Western Europe, the number of patients has been steadily declining over the past decade, while it has almost doubled in the eastern part of the continent. Most new infections were registered in Latvia (326 cases), Estonia (190 cases) and Malta (73 cases) in 2018, while the fewest were reported from Slovakia and Slovenia in the region.

HIV infection continues to be most prevalent among homosexual men in the European Union, with 201% of all new cases in 2018. The second most common way AIDS spreads is through heterosexual relationships: 33% of new HIV infections (8,580 people) registered in the EU have contracted the disease.

Transmission due to injecting drug use accounted for only 4 percent of HIV diagnoses the year before, with people likely to be infected in at least a quarter of the cases reported from Latvia and Lithuania.