First Appeared Thursday, 10 August '06

AIDS Africa Drug Report

On The World (a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston), host Lisa Mullins speaks with David Bangsberg, MD, MPH, an AIDS expert at San Francisco General Hospital and senior author of a new study on AIDS treatment in Africa that may open the way for more treatment programs to reach poor patients infected with HIV.

The study, published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that 77 percent of AIDS patients in sub-Saharan Africa took their drugs correctly, compared with 55 percent of North Americans. The research contradicts a statement made by Andrew Natsios, Bush’s former administrator of USAID, that Africans do not comply with the regimens because they can’t tell time.

Bangsberg is associate professor of medicine in residence in the UCSF Department of Medicine’s Division of Infectious Diseases and the AIDS division at San Francisco General Hospital Medical Center (SFGHMC). He directs the Epidemiology and Prevention Interventions Center, an infectious diseases epidemiology research unit at SFGHMC.

The World
August 8, 2006

Links:

“Study Debunks Myths of How Well Africans Follow AIDS Regimens”
Los Angeles Times, August 9, 2006

“Africans Much Better than North Americans at Taking Anti-HIV Meds”
August 8, 2006

"Adherence to Antiretroviral Therapy in Sub-Saharan Africa and North America: A Meta-analysis" David R. Bangsberg et al. JAMA 2006;296:679-690 Abstract | Full Text | Full Text (PDF)