Truvada: A Potential Solution for HIV Prevention and Treatment

This report highlights Truvada, a medicine that helps prevent and treat HIV, its benefits for individuals and governments, and potential downsides associated with funding HIV prevention. Truvada is a fixed dose combination of two antiretroviral medications that reduces the incidence of HIV infection by around 42%. It helps infected people to live their social life and doing all their activities with freedom as the HIV patients had to be very preventive till the time the disease persists. It is also beneficial for the government as they can use it for improving the health economics of their nation.

INTRODUCTORY HEALTH
ECONOMICS
Contents

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INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................................1
Introduction of Truvada.........................................................................................................................1
Potential downside associated with funding HIV prevention................................................................4
CONCLUSION.....................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES......................................................................................................................................5
INTRODUCTION
HIV is one of the major health issues in the modern day world. There are various researches
that are going on in the world and they are trying to develop new kinds of ways in which HIV
can be prevented and cured (Calabrese and Underhill, 2015). There is lot of investments
going on in the research field so as to come with best of medicines for curing HIV AID.

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Since HIV attacks on the immune system hence finding medicine for it is difficult. Truvada
which is a brand name for Emtricitabine/tenofovir is the first of its kind that is able to treat
and prevent people that are infected from HIV AIDS. It is basically a fixed dozed
combination of two antiretroviral medication namely emtricitabine and tenofovir disoproxil.
This report highlights the way in which this medicine helps both individuals and
governments. It also describes the potential downside linked with funding HIV prevention
through this manner.
Introduction of Truvada
From very long time researchers were trying to develop new medicines that might help in the
treatment of HIV AIDS. It was the year 2004, when United States approved the medical use
of it and it was the first of its kind (Hosek, et. al., 2013). The WHO has included it in the list
of most essential medicines. It is very effective and highly in terms of medical use. Its
wholesale cost in the developing nations is around 6.06 to 7.44 USD per month while in US it
is around $1415.00 per month. It was found that it reduced the incidence of HIV infection by
around 42% but this is not exact as it differed from race to race as found in the study in
heterosexual African Women. In a mathematical modelling it was found that daily intake of
this medicine can reduce the HIV risk to around 99%. The person who takes medicine four or
more times a week is able to reduce their risk by 50% to 100%.
Another study revealed that both tenofovir alone as well as in combination decreases the risk
of contracting HIV by around 51%. In US, it has been approved for pre-exposure prophylaxis
against HIV infection. It is to be understood by the fact that this medicine does not cure HIV
AIDS rather enables people to fight with the disease (Mera, et. al., 2016). It reduces the
amount of virus that is present in the body by slowing down the progression of bodies. If
healthy people take it then there is least chance that their cells cannot get attacked by the
AIDS virus. This helps in making sure that people can easily live a social life with the
patients. This is good for the society’s wellbeing.

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Figure 2: Structure of tenofovir disoproxil
This drug is highly beneficial for the individuals because of the reasons as stated in this
paragraph. There are several people who are infected from HIV AIDS and hence this
medicine can reduce the chances of their death which is more common in the case of this
disease (Ratcliffe, et. al., 2011). Its use also prevents people who do not use condoms while
having sex and are unknown about HIV status of sex partners. It also prevents people who
used the infected equipment unknowingly in the last month or so. This is a medicine that
makes a person capable of fighting with this disease in the case when other medicines have
failed. It is also beneficial for the people as they can enjoy their social life without being
potentially threatened by any such kind of disease. It helps infected people to live their social
life and doing all their activities with freedom as the HIV patients had to be very preventive
till the time the disease persists (Fauci, Folkers and Dieffenbach, 2013). This is because if the
healthy people take it, there is no chance that it may create problems for them. Patients
suffering from HIV will not have to lead an isolated life as normal people have the fear that
they will get affected by the HIV patients. It also helps in saving of the marriage life as
otherwise the other partners feels an excessive burden on himself.

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Figure 1The Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic
It has empowered the people living in the society to take care of them even while being in the
place where there are larger numbers of infected people. This can be extremely good for the
people who are working at the care homes where the HIV positive patients are kept.
Previously the employees of this care homes were extremely conscious while dealing with
the patients and hence a proper care may not be given to the patients having AIDS. In the
same way it has also empowered the families who have one patient in them as they do not
have to deal with extra care while they are living with them (Heneine and Kashuba, 2012).
Families also do not have to send the patients to care homes so that accidently do not share
the disease. For example if the patient gets any kind of cuts they can share any kind of fluids
with other person. This has a relatively lower chance but still families are highly concerned

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about this and they send them to care settings (Krakower, et. al., 2014). With the use of
Truvana families will feel that they can live with patients also without taking over cautions.
It does not only benefit the people rather it benefitted other stakeholders like Government.
This can be understood by the facts stated. The government had to invest a lot in the curing
and preventing people from this disease. There are lot of knowledge development programs
that are run by government but most of them go in vein as the social point of view regarding
this disease is unable to change (Auerbach, et. al., 2015). Even after the advertisements like
we can lead a normal social life with patients as well as eating or sitting with them does not
actually makes them infected. It is also beneficial for the government as they do not have to
think regarding finding cures for the person. Governments also had to spend a huge amount
of money on building the infrastructure for the patients who are poor so that they live in care
settings and does not get infected by some other disease (U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services, 2012). The most important benefit that Truvada gives to government is that
it helps in improving the health related index of the nation or in other words it helps in
increasing the health economics of the nation which is extremely necessary for the image
build-up of the nation. The increasing health economics always helps the in improving the
condition of families living in the nation (Flash, et. al., 2014). This can be understood by the
fact that developing countries have adopted this medicine so as to provide treatment to all the
patients that are living in the nation. It is also to be understood that it helps the government
organisations to carry on the research so that they can experiment on various other aspects
related to the disease. It will help in the development of certain new kinds of medicines. In
the rural areas of the developing nation do not have the good health infrastructure hence this
medicine helps the government to cure the public.
Potential downside associated with funding HIV prevention
There are many people, organisations and governments that is funding for the cause of
finding HIV AIDS. For finding this solution there are many researches are going on. With the
development of such kinds of medicine which is not even 100% effective for curing the HIV,
there will be downside in terms of funding that is done for finding ways regarding HIV
protection. This can be understood by the fact that there was huge number of organisations
who were supporting the research related to finding cure for the HIV as a disease.

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Since the funding of the developing nations after the development of this medicine was
towards the making of this medicine and distributing it to all the people rather than
developing new kinds of medicine. Previously the funding was towards the development of
new techniques to protect people from any kind of disease (Grov, et. al., 2015). This has also
reduced the chances that any better medicines could develop. It is to be understood by the
fact that companies which were putting efforts towards the development of new techniques
basically shifted towards finding the potential drawbacks and advantages of Truvana. In
many ways it is also to be noticed that the exporters or venture capitalist are thinking about
the development of business rather than finding a better solution (Cohen, et. al., 2013). In the
community’s fight towards eliminating this disease from the society, this is a serious setback.
CONCLUSION
From the above based report it can be concluded that HIV AIDS is a highly dangerous
disease. There are no medicines that are made for fighting with this disease. Truvana is the
first of its kind which has given potential to reduce the risk of having AIDS by around 50% to
90%. This is extremely beneficial for the people who are not affected by this disease and
cannot leave the person who are affected like in the case of family members and care setting
employees. It is also beneficial for the government as they can use it for improving the health
economics of their nation. With the development of this medicine there is downside noticed
in the funding by several organisations and individuals.

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REFERENCES
Auerbach, J.D., Kinsky, S., Brown, G. and Charles, V., (2015) Knowledge, attitudes, and
likelihood of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) use among US women at risk of acquiring
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Calabrese, S.K. and Underhill, K., (2015) How stigma surrounding the use of HIV
preexposure prophylaxis undermines prevention and pleasure: a call to destigmatize “Truvada
Whores”. American journal of public health, 105(10), pp.1960-1964.
Cohen, M.S., Smith, M.K., Muessig, K.E., Hallett, T.B., Powers, K.A. and Kashuba, A.D.,
(2013) Antiretroviral treatment of HIV-1 prevents transmission of HIV-1: where do we go
from here?. The Lancet, 382(9903), pp.1515-1524.
Fauci, A.S., Folkers, G.K. and Dieffenbach, C.W., (2013) HIV-AIDS: much accomplished,
much to do. Nature immunology, 14(11), p.1104.
Flash, C., Landovitz, R., Mera Giler, R., Ng, L., Magnuson, D., Bush Wooley, S. and
Rawlings, K., (2014) Two years of Truvada for pre‐exposure prophylaxis utilization in the
US. Journal of the International AIDS Society, 17(4S3).
Grov, C., Whitfield, T.H., Rendina, H.J., Ventuneac, A. and Parsons, J.T., (2015) Willingness
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Krakower, D., Ware, N., Mitty, J.A., Maloney, K. and Mayer, K.H., (2014) HIV providers’
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Ratcliffe, L., Beadsworth, M.B., Pennell, A., Phillips, M. and Vilar, F.J., (2011) Managing
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reducing the risk of sexually acquired HIV infection [Online]. Available at:
https://aidsinfo.nih.gov/news/1254/fda-approves-first-drug-for-reducing-the-risk-of-sexually-
acquired-hiv-infection