Dr Rodgers checking HIV-positive blood samples from Cameroon at her lab. She observes that a new strain of HIV or hepatitis virus is just a plane ride away, and that makes it crucial to keep track of viral diversity in order to be able to detect them. — Abbott
Every time a human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) or hepatitis virus enters your body, it mutates. That’s 36.7 million mutations for HIV and 328 million mutations for hepatitis B and C together, according to the number of infections worldwide as estimated by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Every time such a disease-causing virus mutates, we run the risk of not only being unable to treat it with our current medications, but also being unable to detect it in the first place. And if the presence of a virus in a person cannot be detected, not only can he or she continue infecting other people with it, but they will also not be treated properly as doctors would not know what they are ill from.
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