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AIDS Today: Where Has the Aid Gone for AIDS?

AIDS Today: Where Has the Aid Gone for AIDS?
How dangerous is AIDS today?

While many wealthy nations have found ways to manage HIV, neither it nor AIDS had yet been eradicated.

Since the epidemic began in 1981, over 70 million people have been infected with the HIV virus, and upward of 35 million have succumbed to AIDS.

In 2015 alone, 1.1 million people died of AIDS or of an AIDS-related illness. Sub-Saharan Africa houses a majority of the AIDS infected population. One in every 25 adults is infected with the disease.

Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for nearly 70 percent of the worldwide infected population, while the other 30 percent are dispersed primarily throughout Western and Central Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Despite these substantial numbers, investments in HIV prevention research have decreased. Many donors were met with a slew of competing funding demands. Others no longer see the retrovirus as posing a current threat. Much of the world views HIV and AIDS as medical relics — diseases of a time long gone. Yet every day nearly 5,753 people are infected with HIV. That is about 240 people every hour.

HIV is transmitted from person-to-person through unprotected sexual intercourse, transmission of contaminated blood and from mother to child during birth or through breastfeeding. There is no cure for HIV, but the virus can be treated to almost a complete halt with antiretroviral therapy.

However, marginalized groups of people are not granted access to this therapy. As of December 2015, more than 60 percent of people living with HIV did not have access to antiretroviral therapy.

For the first time since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, scientists believe we are in reach of an entirely AIDS-free generation. Since 2000, the United Nation’s International Children’s Emergency Fund estimates that about 30 million new infections have been averted, eight million lives have been saved and 15 million people who would not otherwise have access are now receiving treatment.

The International AIDS Conference is a biennial meeting held for people working in fields actively related to the prevention of HIV. This year, nearly 18,000 delegates and 1,000 journalists showed up. Many of those in attendance were policymakers, people living with the disease and others committed to putting a stop to the epidemic. This year’s theme was “Access Equity Right Now.” It focused primarily on the ways in which the world can refocus global efforts on HIV/AIDS today and hopefully making treatment readily available to everyone.

But why should we stop there? With access to birth control and prenatal care, better sex education and sterile medical equipment, it is conceivable that we could live in a world that is entirely HIV-free — a world where AIDS really is history.

– Kayla Provencher

Photo: Flickr

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21st International AIDS Conference Held in South Africa

International AIDS Conference

The International AIDS Society (IAS) hosted the 21st International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa from July 18 to July 22. The conference discussed the various improvements in HIV/AIDS science as well as challenges the medical community needs to address.

The theme of this year’s conference was “Access Equity Rights Now.” The event was designed to tackle inequalities in access to medical treatment, including barriers such as poverty, gender, race and location.

South Africa has the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence in the world. According to UNAIDS, anywhere between 6.7 and 7.4 million people live with HIV in the country. Yet, more than 60 percent of those infected are not on antiretroviral treatment.

The previous International AIDS Conference held in Melbourne, Australia called for the Victorian State government to repeal a law discriminatory to the HIV-positive population. Additionally, the 2012 conference in Washington, D.C. led to the government removing the country’s travel ban on individuals with HIV.

The equity rights movement within the 2016 conference is a push toward equality for marginalized communities affected by the virus.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), two-thirds of new HIV infections occur in Sub-Saharan Africa. Men who have sex with men, drug users and sex workers are among the various groups that are at a higher risk of infection. Even women face higher chances of transmission and greater barriers to treatment.

The International AIDS Conference brings together health professionals to improve the state of HIV/AIDS detection and treatment around the world. While there is still a long way to go in the struggle against this virus, statistics over recent years show promise.

The WHO reports a 35% decrease in new HIV cases in addition to a 28% decrease in deaths due to AIDS since 2000. With the majority of HIV cases in low and middle-income countries, the support of the international community is crucial to saving lives.

– Saroja Koneru

Photo: Flickr

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The Latest in AIDS Research from UNC Chapel Hill

The Latest in AIDS Research from UNC Chapel Hill
There’s good news and bad news for those who suffer from AIDS in the developing world.

On July 20, researchers, public health institutions, international policymakers and numerous others gathered in Vancouver, Canada for the eighth International AIDS Society Conference. Myron Cohen of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s Institute for Global Health & Infectious Disease had an interesting announcement. This announcement was the result of a huge, cross-sectional study on AIDS called HPTN 052 that he conducted on over 1,700 couples worldwide.

It wasn’t the first time that a major breakthrough had come out of Vancouver. At the same conference in 1996, AIDS research showed that it was possible to effectively treat AIDS, when contracting the disease previously would almost always lead to an early death.

First, the good news. According to Cohen, a particularly potent cocktail of AIDS medications can effectively render the disease incommunicable, as long as medicines are taken consistently. In the study, the treatment was shown to cut the risk of infection by 96 percent. This type of preventative treatment is known as antiretroviral therapy. If patients stop taking these antiretroviral drugs, the infection will reemerge.

While the study was almost entirely confined to heterosexual couples, Cohen said that, “Observational studies show it should work in men who have sex with men and we’re doing a study now looking at intravenous drug users.”

This means that if the current generation of those who suffer from AIDS can adhere to a strict regimen, they can avoid passing on the disease to successive generations. If treatment is widespread enough, this could eventually eradicate the disease.

However, there is a downside. The combination of antiretroviral drugs that can cripple the disease is quite expensive, making them all but inaccessible to the poor.

This hasn’t stopped the World Health Organization (WHO) from enthusiastically recommending that anyone who tests positive for HIV be immediately given antiretroviral treatment. WHO had previously recommended antiretroviral therapy for certain demographics, such as pregnant women and children, but has since expanded their recommendation based on the results of the study. Gottfried Hirnschall, director of WHO’s HIV/AIDS division, has noted that reaching currently untreated populations around the world would require an extra $30 billion in funding.

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who funded Cohen’s study, has said that, “For a long time there was the tension between whether you should focus on preventing HIV infection or treating HIV infection, [but] HPTN 052 showed that treatment is prevention.” However, given that antiretroviral treatment is so expensive, prevention strategies such as the use of condoms should still probably remain a prominent feature of global health policies.

Fortunately, there is cause to be optimistic about the capacity of global institutions and aid contributors to address the AIDS epidemic. Michel Sidibe, executive director of the United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, points out that the world has reached its target of treating 15 million of the 35 million people infected with the virus worldwide by 2015. Perhaps in another 15 years, the remaining 20 million people who suffer from AIDS will have access to treatment as well.

– Derek Marion

Sources: Charlotte Observer,, Nature, Ahram
Photo: Instinct Magazine