NIH to drop support for HIV Treatment Guidelines?
One of the more disturbing decisions to percolate out of the NIH this week was the statement from the Office of AIDS Research that NIH will drop support for the maintenance of the HIV Treatment Guidelines document. This is prepared and maintained mostly through volunteer effort from members of the community, researchers and medical providers, so there is not much monetary savings to be had by dropping support. It does not, however, surprise me much that this government is dropping support for something that is primarily perceived to impact the LGBTQ+ community and communities of color and the poorer areas of the country.
The good news if that there are other organizations well positioned to pick up the slack as we lose faith in our government as a reliable source of medical information.
IAS-USA has many of the same volunteers used to create the NIH Guidlines.
The WHO provides a set of guidelines primarily targeting access in developing countries.
https://www.who.int/teams/global-hiv-hepatitis-and-stis-programmes/guidelines/hiv-guidelines
The global HIV community has dealth successfully with government indifference and neglect in the past, so I supposed it is time again to pull up our bootstraps and ensure pur health care providers have access to the best information on the care and treatment of HIV infection. We will work together and collaborate withother global health organizations to ensure our care is top nothc until such time as our own government is willing to help. Below i’ve linked an article from P{OZ magazine on the latest NIH announcement.
https://www.poz.com/article/nih-will-end-support-hiv-clinical-guidelines
