Live Life Team
Diagnosis – continuation
Telling your boss
Disability Discrimination Act protects HIV infected people. If you want to gain protection under this, your boss must be informed about your diagnosis. It is up to you to tell, there is no compulsion for you to tell nor can no law stop them to ask you whether you have HIV. You may have apprehensions about how they shall react to your HIV and in case you face any kind of discrimination from them. But in case you have a very supportive boss, telling shall make things easier for you
In case of new job application, it is up to you to inform the employer but if mentioned in the application form about the HIV status and you don’t mention it. It can be treated as ‘a breach of mutual trust’
If you are employed with healthcare services, the occupational health physician should be informed and performing any invasive procedure should be avoided. Queries regarding work related can be addressed to the HIV organizations, who shall give proper guidance and advice.
Treatment
Once HIV is diagnosed, HIV clinic shall be referred to you wherein a counselling session will be given.
Blood tests will be done regularly as it is a part of the treatment. These tests measure two things:
CD4 count – number of CD4 cells in blood,
viral load – amount of HIV in blood.
This test shall determine the HIV clinic staff progress of the disease and the chances of developing infection.
Implications of various CD4 counts are given below.
CD4 count of 500 or more means no risk of infection.
CD4 count between 200 and 500 means small risk of infection, particularly tuberculosis (TB).
CD4 count less than 200 means high risk of severe infection.
At regular intervals viral load shall be measured to check whether the given medicines are effectively treating HIV. In case of new medicine combinations a high viral load is recommended. Viral load and CD4 count has a tendency to fluctuate with time hence low or high reading doesn’t mean that the condition is getting worse.
Highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART)
HIV cannot be cured or there are no vaccines that can prevent you by this infection. However, HAART or highly active antiretroviral therapy is used in slowing the progress and also having a long life. This has been proved very successful. As per the researchers by continuation of this improvement therapy shall mean that any individual with HIV will have similar span of life as anyone who is unaffected by HIV. Combination of medications is involved in this therapy as HIV gets accustomed and resistant to a single medicine. Once CD4 levels drops lesser than 350, HAART is recommended. There are various other medications that should be used in this therapy. It includes:
integrase inhibitors
fusion inhibitors,
protease inhibitors
non-nucleoside reverse transcriptae inhibitors (NNRTIs or ‘non-nukes’),
nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs or ‘nukes’),
Though all the medicines work in various ways but are specially designed to disturb the reproduction of virus and also to reduce its speed to spread, it also has the capacity to protects the immune system. People with HIV infection are advised to consume two medications, one from NRTIs and other medicine from other class. With the least side effects it aims to find one of the best and most effective combinations of medication.
