British man might be first in the world to be cured of HIV after 'breakthrough' treatment - The Independent.

Pioneering new therapy launches two-stage 'kick and kill' attack on the virus ...

A 44-year-old British man may have become the first person in the world to be cured of HIV.
Tests showed the virus had become undetectable in the blood of the previously HIV-positive man, after he was treated with a pioneering new therapy designed to eradicate the virus.
Researchers have cautioned that it is too early to tell if the treatment has really worked but said the man, a social worker, had made "remarkable progress".

The patient was the first of 50 people to complete a trial of the ambitious treatment which launches a two-stage “kick and kill” attack on the virus.
The new therapy is unique in that it tracks down and destroy HIV in every part of the body —including in the dormant cells that evade current treatments.
“This is one of the first serious attempts at a full cure for HIV,” Mark Samuels of Britain's National Institute for Health Research told The Sunday Times.
”This is a huge challenge and it's still early days, but the progress has been remarkable," he said.
The clinical trials, which are being paid for by the NHS, are the result of a collaboration between doctors and scientists at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College London, University College London and King's College London.

The man, who has not been named, said he participated in the trial to help others with the disease.
HIV, which stands for ”human immunodeficiency virus,“ is mainly transmitted through sexual acts or by using infected needles. The virus weakens a person's immune system by destroying T-cells which are crucial to fighting disease and infection.
About 36.7 million people are living with HIV worldwide, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Antiretroviral therapies target and suppress active infected cells but they leave millions of dormant infected T-cells lying in wait throughout the body. This means existing treatments can effectively control HIV but do not cure the disease.

The new treatment, however, would both suppress infections and kill the reservoir of dormant cells, The Sunday Times reported.
Sarah Fidler, a consultant physician and professor at Imperial College London, said medical tests of the potentially breakthrough therapy would continue for the next five years.
”It has worked in the laboratory and there is good evidence it will work in humans too,“ Ms Fidler said. ”But we must stress that we are still a long way from any actual therapy."

   

What is the best response to provocation ?

Three Lessons from this picture:

1. Sometimes the best response to provocation is not to fight
2. Not all opportunities are to be taken. Some are traps.
3. A person can become so determined to destroy another person that they become blind and end up destroying themselves.

Cristiano Ronaldo Plane Crash: Landing gear malfunction on impact at Barcelona.

Real Madrid superstar Cristiano Ronaldo’s private jet has crash landed at the El Prat airport in Barcelona. It is being reported that the 31-year-old and his family was not on the plane during the incident.
Eyewitnesses reveal that emergency services rushed to the spot of the accident immediately. The cause of the accident is believed to be a malfunction in the landing gear. Nobody in the plane was hurt, except the pilot who escaped with a few minor injuries, as reported by Mirror.

Time for Mugabe to go, says Botswana President Khama.

Zimbabwe's 92-year-old President Robert Mugabe should step aside without delay and allow new leadership of a country whose political and economic implosion since 2000 is dragging down the whole of southern Africa, Botswana President Ian Khama said.

Despite his reputation as one of Africa's most outspoken figures, Khama's remarks are certain to raise hackles in Harare, where factions of Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party are locked in a bitter struggle to succeed the only leader Zimbabwe has known.

Asked by Reuters if Mugabe, who came to power after independence from Britain in 1980, should accept the reality of his advancing years and retire, 63-year-old Khama responded: "Without doubt. He should have done it years ago."
"They have got plenty of people there who have got good leadership qualities who could take over," Khama, the UK-born son of Botswana's first president, Seretse Khama, and his British wife, Ruth, continued.

"It is obvious that at his age and the state Zimbabwe is in, he's not really able to provide the leadership that could get it out of its predicament," Khama said, in comments that breach an African diplomatic taboo banning criticism of fellow leaders.

Botswana, the world's largest producer of diamonds, shares 800 km (500 miles) of border with Zimbabwe and has felt the full effects of its neighbour's economic collapse under the weight of political violence and hyperinflation since 2000.

Although the economy established in 2009 with the scrapping of the worthless Zimbabwe dollar, a slump in commodity prices over the last two years has triggered a cash crunch that has fed through into unprecedented public anger at Mugabe.

No clear potential successor has emerged from the destabilising factional fight to take over afterMugabe.

Khama said the instability was damaging Botswana's efforts to wean itself off mining - which accounts for 20 per cent of GDP and nearly 60 per cent of exports - by promoting itself as a regional logistics and services hub.

The unrest was also forcing more and more Zimbabweans to leave the country, he added.
Botswana is home only to an estimated 100,000 Zimbabweans - a fraction of the three million believed to be in South Africa - although this is still enough to strain public services in a nation of 2.3 million people.

Botswana's jails held "significant numbers" of Zimbabweans, Khama said.
"It is a big concern," the British-trained former general said. "It is a problem for all of us in the region - and it is a burden. There's no doubt about that."

Resurrection man

In the latest controversy over his health, Mugabe left a summit of southern African leaders at the end of August without warning and went to Dubai, fuelling rumours he had been taken gravely ill or may even have died.

Khama did not discuss any specifics of Mugabe's condition at the meeting but said his counterpart looked tired. "We're talking about a 92-year-old man and there's just so much you can do at that age to try and keep up."

Mugabe frequently refers to himself as "fit as a fiddle" and hints at a desire to stay in power until he is 100. After his Dubai trip, which he attributed to a family matter, Mugabe joked about online reports of his imminent demise.

"Yes, I was dead. It's true I was dead. I resurrected as I always do. Once I get back to my country I am real," he told reporters at Harare airport.

Khama reiterated his government's concerns about the credibility of the elections Mugabe has won in recent years, but said irrespective of the results no leader should cling on to power for that long.
"My opinion has always been that 10 years leading any kind of organisation - not just a country or a government, any organisation - is pretty much the maximum," he said.

During its 50 years since independence, Botswana has emerged as a politically and economically stable nation that has used its mineral wealth prudently - a rarity on a continent where such treasures have been routinely squandered, stolen or the cause of civil war.

Khama's second five-year term in office ends in 2018 when he will hand over to vice-president Mokgweetsi Masisi in a carefully scripted political succession that makes instability almost impossible.

After 2018, Khama, a keen nature-lover whose wood-panelled office is adorned with pictures of the African savannah, said he wanted to dedicate his time to tourism and conservation.

Thanks to a focus on safari tourism and a zero-tolerance approach to poaching, Botswana boasts more than 150,000 elephants, a third of Africa's entire population of the animals.

But Khama said there was no room for complacency in the fight against the illegal ivory trade given the rampant poaching in other countries on the continent.

"One day if their animals become extinct and we still have viable populations, all the guns will be focused on us," he said.