Positive news for people living with HIV

Schalk Malan, Executive director: Actuarial at BrightRock.

The 1st of December 2016 will mark the 28th time that the world will be observing World AIDS Day. While South Africa has the highest prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the world, with over six million people living with the disease in the country, we’ve come a long way towards treating people living with HIV. Better access to antiretroviral (ART) treatment and more medical information about treating HIV have enabled those living with the condition to live longer and have a better standard of life.

BrightRock recently announced that it’ll now be offering needs-matched insurance solutions for people living with HIV. While there are some companies that focus specifically on providing life insurance cover to HIV positive people, traditional insurers haven’t had products for HIV positive people until recently. BrightRock is committed to giving cover to as many South Africans as possible and we’re glad that we can now extend our needs-matched product to people living with HIV.

HIV positive people who have been on treatment for at least six months, have a viral load of less than 400, a CD4 count of more than 200 and aren’t suffering from any AIDS defining condition, like tuberculosis (TB), will be able to access this cover.

This will hopefully be the first step in more and more insurers offering cover for people living with HIV. We are encouraged by the developments we’ve seen in the past few years in the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS. People living with HIV can now live relatively healthy lives and this condition is now seen more as a chronic condition that can be managed easily.

While finding a cure for HIV/AIDS still seems like a distant dream, there’s progress being made towards finding a vaccine. The International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2016), which was held in Durban in July this year once again brought sharp focus on where we’re going towards treating HIV in the future.

Deputy Director of the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre in Cape Town, Linda-Gail Bekker, announced at the conference that 5 400 HIV-negative people across South Africa would be testing a new HIV vaccine called HVTN 702. This vaccine, which will be trialled on people between the ages of 18 – 35, is specifically designed for South Africa and will run for three years. Participants will receive five injections over the course of a year and will be followed-up for two years more to establish whether the vaccine has a sustained protective effect. If the vaccine is successful, it will be the first preventative vaccine in the world.

This is good news for the country and the world as the rate of new HIV infections is still alarmingly high – 2.1 million people were infected with HIV last year alone. Even so, the amount of research being done all over the world to try and end HIV is encouraging and hopefully the world will achieve the United Nations goal of ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030. Until then, BrightRock will continue to try and find solutions to help HIV-positive people protect their families financially should they be permanently disabled or die.