Positive news from the world of science came to our ears yesterday.

An intensive campaign to combat HIV/AIDS with costly antiretroviral drugs in South Africa has increased life expectancy by more than 11 year. It's also responsible for a reduced risk of infection for healthy people.

This is thanks to anti-retroviral therapy (ART) that was administered by nurses in rural clinics. The therapy consists of a daily dose of medicine that the patient has to take everyday.

Using ART can reduce the viral load and reduce the infectiveness of the person, still it's always better to use a condom. 

There still is the stigma to consider though. The sociological factor of the story is that people aren't used to using protection. This is why critics want to give more funding to the use of preventive methods, like condoms and spreading awareness.  

This something I agree with: it's all very well that there's a daily dose of medicine that will keep people alive in a good way when they're infected, but that doesn't mean we can loose sight of the big threat. 

The best cure for any disease is prevention.

Still, I congratulate the brilliant minds who came up with the antiretroviral methods, I really think this is amazing, giving people who are ill their life back.

To conclude: Thanks to medical science people who are infected with HIV can, by use of ART, live a long and fulfilling life. But we should never forget prevention; medication is a way of living with the disease, not a cure. The "cure" so far is prevention