NY Gov. Cuomo Confident to End AIDS Epidemic by 2020

As HIV infection drops down, the governor's office of New York is optimistic that they can end the AIDS epidemic in the state by the end of 2020.

Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo announced through his website that the number of HIV diagnoses has decreased by 11% since 2017, with the total case of 2,481. 

This historic low record has been contributed by Cuomo's initiative called "Ending the Epidemic." It aimed to give proper medical care to HIV patients and prevent the virus from causing more problems. Since the project's launch in 2014, New York already experienced a 28% drop.

PrEP, or pre-exposure prophylaxis, a drug that can reduce users' risk from getting infected with HIV through sex, has become the project's pillar. In 2018, about 32,000 New Yorkers took the mentioned HIV-inhibiting drug, which was a 32% increase from 2017, the office said. Therefore, the state's health department is currently working on making health insurance companies cover PrEP without co-pay in 2020.

According to a report, the state has allocated $20 million from its budget since 2015 to support the initiative. Another $2.2 billion was also spent on improving the accessibility of HIV care and treatment. 

HIV in America

While New York is experiencing massive success, it is still unclear if the whole United States would follow the same path. According to the report of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in February, the rate of new HIV infection cases had stopped changing after years of steady decline. 

In the United States, 1 in 7 people living with the virus are undiagnosed. As of 2017, Washington D.C. has the highest reported case, with 1 out of 13 citizens. With that, President Donald Trump announced his 10-year plan of decreasing the HIV infection by 90% by 2030.  Trump is hoping that both the Liberals and the Democrats would work together to end this world health concern.

The US Department of Health and Human Service noted that most reported cases came from highly concentrated areas in the United States. For instance, more than 50% of new cases reported in 2016 and 2017 were in Columbia, San Juan, and Puerto Rico. Due to the number of cases reported in the previous years, the plan included concentrating on this "geographic hotspot," along with increased early diagnosis and making viral suppression treatment and preventative drugs more accessible.

"So this is something that has not been done before. We have certainly discussed this type of approach, but this is the first time we've had a multi-agency approach where the individual agencies will be working very closely together," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.  

Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is a virus that infiltrates the immune system, which weakens its ability to combat diseases and infection. Without proper treatment, it will advance to AIDS. World Health Organization reported that there are at least 37.9 million HIV-positive patients.