For the legions of people who have been afflicted with H.I.V., news of improved treatment methods and more powerful anti-viral medicines, are met with equal happiness and relief. The hope that a cure is on the horizon has always been the best case, dream of all dreams, scenario. That day might be coming sooner than we could have ever hoped. An infant in Mississippi is believed to be the first HIV positive baby cured of the disease. Doctors caution that the diagnosis is yet to be fully confirmed, but if this cure comes to fruition, it will alter our understanding how to rid the world of this wretched diseases once and for all.
Doctors announced on Sunday that a baby had been cured of an H.I.V. infection for the first time, a startling development that could change how infected newborns are treated and sharply reduce the number of children living with the virus that causes AIDS. The baby, born in rural Mississippi, was treated aggressively with antiretroviral drugs starting around 30 hours after birth, something that is not usually done. If further study shows this works in other babies, it will almost certainly be recommended globally. The United Nations estimates that 330,000 babies were newly infected in 2011, the most recent year for which there is data, and that more than three million children globally are living with H.I.V
