Ricky Durham created the site in 2004 in honor of his brother, Keith. The site is geared to match people with special health needs to others with similar conditions. Whether this search is for friendship or something more is entirely up to the user.

Ricky’s brother Keith had Crohn’s Disease, a form of irritable bowel disorder. It could make meeting people for the first time awkward. That’s when Ricky came up with the idea for Prescription 4 Love.

“Deciding when to tell someone you have a colostomy bag is incredibly difficult,” Durham explains. “I thought if Keith had a chance to meet someone with a similar condition, there would be no need to have to disclose anything.”

Prescription 4 Love is set up like most other online dating sites. Users can create their own profiles, browse through the forums, and chat with each other in an open environment without a hidden medical history. Durham’s recently added instant messaging, blogging and virtual gifts to the mix.

Durham’s site began with a focus on just 11 chronic illnesses, but has expanded to include more than 30. Prescription4Love welcomes anyone from amputees to recovering alcoholics, people with diabetes or heart disease, people who have or have had cancer to little people. Durham has even added STDs to the list. In fact, HIV and herpes are among his most popular groups.

“One lady in particular called me who had cancer said that whenever she told the person she was dating she had cancer they stopped dating her within a matter of days,” he says. Now she can find acceptance in a community where everyone can relate in one way or another.

As of now more than 8,000 people have used the site, and although Keith passed away before the site was fully developed, he is still very much the driving force behind Ricky’s work.

“Keith is the inspiration behind everything that I do for Prescription4Love,” he says. “I have had phone calls and emails from different people thanking me for stating such a web site…the response has been great.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently compiled a list of the top states with the highest reported cases of AIDS. Although most cases of HIV/AIDS occur outside the United States, more than a million people were living with AIDS in the U.S. as of 2003. The CDC estimates that as many as 24-27% of people infected with HIV were unaware of their infection. CDC statistics on HIV and AIDS in the U.S. report data by age, race, state, and transmission category.

The top 10 states with most reported cases of HIV and/or AIDS in 2006 are:

1. New York (5,495 reported cases)
2. Florida (4,932)
3. California (3,960)
4. Texas (2,998)
5. Pennsylvania (1,893)
6. Maryland (1,626)
7. Georgia (1,605)
8. Illinois (1,382)
9. North Carolina (1,229)
10. New Jersey (1,065)

Discuss AIDS with other people in the HIV/AIDS community in Healia Communities.


_{Data source: CDC HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report: Cases of HIV Infection and AIDS in the United States and Dependent Areas, 2006.http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/basic.htm#area}

_{Photo: Alex Castella,Flickr, Creative Commons}

Today is World AIDS Day, a day when individuals and organizations from around the world come together to build awareness of the global AIDS epidemic. This year marks the 20th anniversary of World AIDS Day, which was inaugurated in 1988 by the World Health Organization (WHO).

This year, both President Bush and President-elect Obama commented on the progress made in the battle against HIV/AIDS and the importance of continued action to combat HIV infection in developing countries. An estimated 33 million people are infected with HIV worldwide and 2 million die of AIDS each year.

Bush highlighted recent gains made in the treatment of people who are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. In 2003, President Bush launched the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to combat global HIV/AIDS, pledging $15 billion to treat 2 million people infected with HIV worldwide over five years. Today Bush announced that the goal had been reached a few months ahead of schedule, highlighting a bright spot of his tenure before he leaves office next month. In July, Bush signed a new law expanding PEPFAR, committing up to $48 billion more over five years to treat and prevent AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere

Obama commended Bush on efforts to fight world AIDS and pledged he would continue the PEPFAR program when he takes office, adding that he would also embark on new efforts to address the disease in the United States as well. Obama noted that AIDS is a very real problem in the United States and that the country needs to recommit itself to addressing the domestic AIDS crisis with a strong national strategy of education, prevention, and treatment.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has estimated that about 1.1 million people in the United States currently are infected with HIV. The CDC also said more people are becoming infected each year than previously estimated, with 56,300 new HIV infections in the U.S. in 2006. Previous estimates put the number of new infections at about 40,000 a year.

The best way to prevent HIV infections is to always practice safe sex, such as using a latex condom. Health experts recommend getting tested for HIV if you have never been tested, as well as after engaging in any risky behaviors. Knowing your HIV status can help keep you from unknowingly spreading the disease and, if you are HIV positive, allows you to begin treatment with medications to prevent the development of AIDS for many years. For more about how you can help combat AIDS in the U.S. and worldwide, visit the World AIDS Campaign. For more information about HIV and AIDS, join the conversation at the Healia Health Community for HIV/AIDS.

_{Photo: ivalladt, Flickr, Creative Commons}

Doctors in Germany say that an HIV-positive patient given a bone marrow transplant appears to have been cured of his HIV infection. The patient, a 42-year-old American man living in Germany, received the transplant to treat leukemia and nearly two years later shows no sign of either HIV infection or cancer. The doctors stressed that this may be an unusual case and further investigation is needed to confirm the results.

While bone marrow transplants have been explored as a way to treat HIV infections in the past, this time the researchers used a new twist. They sought out a bone marrow donor who had a rare genetic mutation that seems to make people resistant to HIV infection. About one in 1000 Europeans and Americans inherits the Delta 32 mutation from both parents, which turns off a protein called CCR5 that the HIV virus needs to infect cells.

A bone marrow transplant involves administering high doses of radiation to kill off the patient’s own infected bone marrow cells and disable the immune system, then replacing it with donor bone marrow. The treatment is very risky and can be fatal as often as 20 to 30 percent of the time. As a result, bone marrow transplants are unlikely to become first-line treatments for HIV infections. However, the finding that it may be possible to induce HIV resistance by mutating CCR5 opens the door for similar studies using techniques such as gene therapy.

To find out more about HIV infection, visit the Healia Health Community for HIV/AIDS.

_{Photo: C. Goldsmith, Wikipedia, Creative Commons}

As we recognize the 20^th World AIDS Day tomorrow (Dec. 1, 2007), prevention of HIV/AIDS remains the key strategy for fighting the disease. The promise of a HIV/AIDS vaccine is yet to be delivered. Clinical trials for an AIDS vaccine were halted in September of this year, causing frustration for many researchers and HIV/AIDS patients.

These two clinical trials found that there were more infections among men who got the vaccine - 49 out of 914 - than those receiving a placebo - 33 of 922 (MSNBC). The first trial took place in the United States, Peru, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, and Australia. The second trial was conducted in South Africa.

So just how close are we to an effective vaccine against HIV/AIDS? Experts agree that a vaccine would be the best way to fight AIDS, but efforts to develop a vaccine have so far been almost completely ineffective. Dozens of potential vaccines are in trials now, but some say it could still be decades before a vaccine is complete.

Until a vaccine is found, prevention must remain our single defense against AIDS. With many powerful HIV/AIDS-fighting drugs in existence today, the risk of dying from AIDS has decreased but it remains a major threat in many areas of the world. AIDS has killed about 25 million people to date.

On World AIDS Day, we should remember the importance of HIV/AIDS prevention and education. Nearly 40 million people, located in every country in the world, are currently infected with HIV.