South African doctor sees drug-resistant HIV

PRETORIA, South Africa—It's 8 a.m. and Dr. Theresa Rossouw is already drowning behind a cluttered desk of handwritten HIV charts -- new, perplexing cases of patients whose lifesaving drugs have turned against them.
Her cell phone chirps. Her desk phone bleats. She scribbles notes on a planner, spins in her chair, juggles requests about labs and drug regimens.

Rossouw is on the front lines of a new battle in the fight against HIV: The drugs that once worked so well are starting not to work. And now the resistance is showing up in sub-Saharan Africa, home to two-thirds of the world's 33 million HIV cases.

Ten years ago, between 1 percent and 5 percent of HIV patients worldwide had drug resistant strains. Now, between 5 percent and 30 percent of new patients are already resistant to the drugs. In Europe, it's 10 percent; in the U.S., 15 percent.

In sub-Saharan Africa, where the drugs only started arriving a few years ago, resistance is partly the unforeseen consequence of good intentions. There are not enough drugs to go around, so clinics run out and patients can't do full courses. The inferior meds available in Africa poison other patients. Misprescriptions are common and monitoring is scarce.

The story of HIV mirrors the rise worldwide of new and more deadly forms of killer infections, such as tuberculosis and malaria. These diseases have mutated in response to the misuse of the very drugs that were supposed to save us, The Associated Press found in a six-month look at soaring drug resistance worldwide.

In Rossouw's shabby little HIV clinic, the tragedy has arrived. She's increasingly bombarded with drug-resistant cases, and there's nothing in her arsenal of medicines to throw at them.

"For the first two or three years I was not seeing it. It was rare," she said, rifling through a patient's tattered record. "Now it is really daily. I think in the next five years, we are going to have such a need."

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It's midmorning and Rossouw's first patient slips inside from the crowded hallway where up to 200 others wait on wooden benches. Monica, who only wishes to be identified by her first name for fear of discrimination, takes a seat.

Rossouw, 37, greets her warmly in their native Afrikaans. She is the only doctor -- out of the six at Tshwane District Hospital's HIV clinic -- who speaks the language, adding translator to her litany of other duties.

Monica, 45, looks and feels healthy. It's hard to believe she's had HIV for nearly a decade. Now she's faced with a new threat, one Rossouw isn't sure the patient fully understands.

Monica has widespread drug resistance -- everything has stopped working. But she's not feeling the sting yet, and it's hard for her to believe a piece of paper that says her meds aren't working.

In sub-Saharan Africa, resistance rates have quietly climbed to around 5 percent in the past few years, and that's a substantial undercount. It's hard to pinpoint resistance because most cases in the developing world aren't tracked. In some high-risk populations worldwide, HIV drug resistance rates soar as high as 80 percent, according to studies published in AIDS, the official journal of the International AIDS Society.

The United Nations estimates $25 billion will be needed to fight AIDS worldwide in 2010, but probably only half that sum will be available. That estimate doesn't account for drug-resistant strains, which could cost $44 billion by 2010.

Monica's slip came in 2004, when, distraught over her mother's death, she went off of her treatment for two months.

"I took the death badly," she said softly. "I had an appointment with the doctor and decided that now that my mom has died, I must die as well."

The HIV drugs used in Africa are very unforgiving, unlike the newer pills used in the West. Miss a dose here or take a pill late, and the virus quickly wins control. There are only a handful of drugs available in South Africa, and once those stop working there are no more options.

Rossouw found an obsolete HIV drug at another hospital and hopes it will keep Monica alive. But she's experimenting at this point.