Is it true that South African doctor sees drug-resistant HIV (AP)?
PRETORIA, South Africa – It’s 8 a.m. and Dr. Theresa Rossouw is already drowning behind a cluttered desk of handwritten HIV charts — new, perplexing cases of patients whose lifesaving drugs have turned against them. Her cell phone chirps. Her desk phone bleats. She scribbles notes on a planner, spins in her chair, juggles requests about labs and drug regimens. Rossouw is on the front lines of a new battle in the fight against HIV: The drugs that once worked so well are starting not to work. And now the resistance is showing up in sub-Saharan Africa, home to two-thirds of the world’s 33 million HIV cases. Ten years ago, between 1 percent and 5 percent of HIV patients worldwide had drug resistant strains. Now, between 5 percent and 30 percent of new patients are already resistant to the drugs. In Europe, it’s 10 percent; in the U.S., 15 percent. In sub-Saharan Africa, where the drugs only started arriving a few years ago, resistance is partly the unforeseen consequence of good intentions
