Experts Take Stock After First Quarter-Century Of War On AIDS
The biggest-ever council of war on AIDS opens on Sunday (13. August), a quarter-century after the disease took its first step in a global rampage that has now claimed more than 25 million lives, reports the World Bank press review.
But in contrast to previous meetings where anguish, frustration and protest were often the hallmark, the six-day 16th International AIDS Conference, running in the Canadian city of Toronto, should unfold in a mood of relative optimism and serenity.
For the first time in its dreadful history, acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) appears to be marking time.
At the end of last year, 38,6 million people were living with the human immunodeficiency virus, the agency UNAIDS reported in May. The global proportion of people infected with HIV “is believed to have peaked in the late 1990s and to have stabilised subsequently”, it declared.
At the same time, the rollout of cheaper, lifesaving antiretrovirals to poor countries is pushing ahead. And the risks of which pharmaceutical giants so vociferously warned just five years ago – mismanagement, corruption, failure to follow a complex drug regimen – have so far not materialised.
In December 2003, only 400.000 people out of 6,5 million badly-infected people in the developing world had access to these drugs. Two years later, the tally was 1,3 million and has surged further since then.
These encouraging events were born of tough experience and campaigning to create a political dynamism about AIDS. In turn, the politicians opened the financial spigots, leading to the more successful prevention, treatment and awareness campaigns that we see today.
– We have reached a plateau in the history of the AIDS epidemic, said Achmat Dangor, UNAIDS director of advocacy, adding: – It is because over the last 25 years, we have learnt some bitter lessons about what to do and what not to do.
Dangor said the optimism had to be heavily salted with caution, noting that AIDS still claimed 2,8 million lives last year and 4,1 million people became newly infected.
Around 20.000 doctors, grassroots workers, lab researchers and policy specialists have registered for the Toronto conference, whose VIP guests will include Bill Clinton, Bill Gates and the movie actor Richard Gere.
The previous international AIDS conference was held in Bangkok, in 2004.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
