SAN ANTONIO — Managing an HIV diagnosis can be overwhelming. A new partnership that hopes to break down barriers and manage the diagnosis as stress free as possible now exists between the ASP pharmacy and the San Antonio AIDS Foundation.
Dr. Waridibo Allison, the medical director at the San Antonio AIDS Foundation and assistant professor in infectious disease at UT Health San Antonio told us, "Just having it on site is really important, and just facilitates things for the patient, so they don't have to go to lots of different places for everything they need for their care."
San Antonio AIDS Foundation CEO Cynthia Nelson added, "We chose them because they are very client focused and they have a great team that interacts well with our doctors, with the clients with our case managers."
As a team pharmacy, they can also tackle Hepatitis C, which is a co-morbidity for roughly 25 percent of those living with HIV. Dr. Allison said, "We now have great drugs to treat and in fact cure Hepatitis C, so we just started treating Hepatitis C."
The services offered under one roof are life-savers for many. "For a lot of our clients, they are insured, so we have to go through pharmaceutical assistance programs to get access to medications for them," Dr. Allison said.
All of this to keep patients as healthy as possible. The HIV care continuum explains how the CDC guides the nation's response to HIV, and includes all steps a person living with HIV must take to stay as healthy as possible. It starts from the moment they are diagnosed, then become linked to care, to the period they retain or engage that care, be prescribed antiretroviral therapy, and finally achieve viral suppression.
"They are now emphasizing again that U equals U. Undetectable is untransmissable. So for a disease that has no cure, the best thing we can do is prevent. So that's why virus depression is so important," Nelson said.
The San Antonio AIDS Foundation offers many services to clients, including job assistance, housing assistance, food programs, HIV testing, prevention education, behavioral health care, oral health care and even telemedicine. For more about the programs they offer you can call them at 210-225-4715 or check out their website.