The Houses That Help Keep HIV at Bay

The health problems of millions of Americans are directly related to patients' failure to follow doctors’ orders. Community health workers are increasingly successful in New York and other American cities – not to substitute for doctors, but to help patients stick to their treatment plans.

Two columns on how Iran averted a major AIDS epidemic through needle exchange programs; a conservative theocracy is successfully treating drug abuse as if it were Amsterdam.

Tuberculosis is still a rampant problem in the developing world. Doctors are looking for even more advanced ways to test for TB beyond the GeneXpert tests.

By partnering with cities across America, the 100,000 Homes campaign is going directly to the streets to end homelessness - and it’s working. With roughly 700,000 people in the United States experiencing homelessness, this organization seeks to address that using a tiered system that considers individual health needs as well.

One-pill-a-day generic AIDS drugs for poor countries are hard to make because each ingredient is patented by a different pharmaceutical company. The Patent Pool provides a way for companies to donate their intellectual property safely.

At least 25 percent of female veterans were sexually abused in childhood, making it more difficult to reenter civilian life. Volunteers of America runs a holistic housing program for homeless veterans in the U.S.

Female veterans are more likely to have a history of trauma, be unemployed, and be homeless. To address this disparity, the VA has started awarding grants to organizations that help female vets.

Slow test results make it difficult to stop the spread of tuberculosis. Using faster diagnostic technology and driving vans to rural areas in Tanzania, GeneXpert is making progress in treating this curable disease.

Although patients go to hospitals to receive medical care, many Americans will acquire infections that did not already have them. The United States as a whole has made modest progress at reducing the rates of hospital-acquired infections. Spearheading the efforts, the Veterans Affairs Medical Centers have devised anti-MRSA strategies to keep patients safe.

For decades, AIDS has taken the lives of millions of people and infected millions more worldwide. The key to reducing the effect of AIDS, and even potentially curing it, involves treating patients as early as possible after being diagnosed with HIV, before the disease damages organs. San Francisco General Hospital developed the RAPID program for this purpose, with the goal of “Getting to Zero” the number of new infections and deaths.