A top United Nations officials says the global HIV/AIDS epidemic could be over by 2030 thanks to advancements in treatment, control and prevention of the disease.
“I think that 2030 is a viable target to say that we have reached the end of the epidemic,” said Luis Loures, a deputy executive director of UNAIDS, the UN agency leading the fight against HIV/AIDS. “HIV will continue existing as a case here or there but not at the epidemic level we have today.”
According to AFP, Loures was in Panama last week to to discuss AIDS strategy with UN agencies in Latin America. With three million new HIV infections and 1.7 million people deaths each year from complications due to AIDS, the epidemic is still very much an issue at hand. But Loures is quick to trumpet the progress made in treating the disease and controlling infection.
AFP reports:
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Two decades ago the average annual cost of treatment per person with HIV was $19,000 while today it is $150 thanks to generic drugs. Moreover, people with HIV are getting treatment earlier, which retards the disease’s development. According to UNAIDS, the annual incidence of new infections has fallen 20 percent over the past decade, and in 25 countries, including 13 in sub-Saharan Africa, it has fallen by 50 percent. Over the past two years, the number of people who have obtained treatment for HIV has increased by 60 percent.
Loures stressed the importance of reaching “the most vulnerable groups” like gay men, sex workers and drug users who often do not seek treatment for fear of being stigmatized or criminally prosecuted. “If we do not succeed in controlling the epidemic among these groups,” Loures warned, “AIDS will stay with us.”
So you heard the man, wrap it up, kids!
andy_d
We need to see these kinds of cost reductions for ALL prescription drugs. Banning passing ADVERTISING COSTS onto the consumer would be a good start in the U.S. The “research costs” argument just does not hold water. This ban would NOT deny these companies their first amendment rights.
QJ201
Not gonna happen while drug companies continue to charge thousands of dollars a month for HIV Meds.
Want to kill the epidemic?
Bust the patents, mass produce cheap generics, hand them out like candy for PrEP & PEP.
viveutvivas
Cheap generics are already being mass produced in India and exported to all over the developing world. Americans can also import these by mail order. Countries with actual judicial systems that work for the common good as opposed that in the U.S. have made legal decisions to the effect that saving lives overrides corporate profits and patents.
DonW
@QJ201: Handing out meds “like candy” for PrEP and PEP sounds like a recipe for promoting misuse and the development of resistant strains. In particular, PEP is for emergencies (e.g., after a rape or an accidental needle stick), not a prevention strategy or an excuse not to consistently practice safer sex.
babybabybaby
That would be great…
technicolornina
Now, howzabout we add actual EDUCATION to the list of ways to prevent HIV? Here are some of the things I learned in high school sex “education,” in 2005, in Pennsylvania:
–You can get HIV from French-kissing another person–even if neither of you have cuts or open skin in your mouths.
–You can get HIV from sharing a cup, towel, or bed with an HIV-positive person even if their viral load is low and neither of you have any open skin on your bodies/in your mouths (as applicable).
–If you get HIV, within three years you will have AIDS and within a year you will be dead.
–The condom industry lies about the efficacy of condoms against HIV–it’s only 25% if used properly, every time.
–If you have sex before marriage you are eighty times more likely to get HIV.
–70% of people with herpes also have HIV/AIDS.
–If you are a man having sex with a woman who has HIV and you don’t use a condom, you have an 80% chance of being infected from a single encounter. (Gays and lesbians don’t exist, apparently.)
–One in four people in the United States has HIV. One in two people worldwide has it.
–Blood transfusions can give you HIV because modern tests aren’t actually all that accurate, but you’re more likely to get HIV from a blood transfusion if you do drugs. (I kid you not. If you can find a way that one of these items is related to the other, I will happily send you cookies or something, because I STILL don’t know how these tie together.)
–Most people who have HIV have it because they had sex with too many people or used drugs. Those who have it because of partners who lied or didn’t know they were pos should have known what they were getting into dating a partner who was promiscuous or did drugs.
How many of the kids who took that class found out that even one item on that list was bullshit, and so decided EVERYTHING WE WERE TAUGHT was bullshit? Granted, a large portion of what we were taught was cow manure so fragrant you could have grown prizewinning corn out of it, but the scare tactics and misinformation only take lives–they don’t save them.
ptseti
Yea….right…..and we’ll have a cure for the common cold in 2050! If stupidity were like birds a lot of people would FLY.
KimberlyYan
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viveutvivas
@technicolornina, jeez, aren’t there laws or medical licensing requirements that can be applied to prosecuting unfit individuals who disseminate false medical information in your state?