However, a project analysing the use of the vaginal gels along with daily tablets has shown that this particular strategy has failed because the women involved did not take the medication when they were supposed to. The results of the study reveal the importance of individual’s behaviour in dictating the spread of the disease.
More than 5,000 women in Zimbabwe, South Africa and Uganda were given the gel and two different types of anti-HIV drugs in the three-year study carried out by the University of Washington called Vaginal and Oral Interventions to Control the Epidemic (VOICE).
Blood tests at the end of the study revealed that more than 70% failed to use the medication in the way it was prescribed. Unmarried women, who are the group most at risk of contracting HIV, were shown to be the most likely to not use of any of the medication.
Truvada, the daily tablet tested during the study, has now given approval for use in HIV prevention by the US Food and Drug Administration because tests have shown its effectiveness in reducing the risk of HIV.
The results of the University of Washington study were revealed at a conference on retroviruses and opportunistic infections in Atlanta. Experts in HIV and AIDS believe the study confirms that, alongside medication, encouraging a change in people’s behaviour so they take the drugs is the only way that infection rates will be reduced.
HIV rates in eastern and southern Africa are the highest anywhere in the world and so the focus for experts on the disease has been on finding drug treatments that can be administered simply and effectively to a destitute population.