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HEALTH-AIDS-CONFERENCE
‘Dangerous complaceny’ feared as AIDS conference opens
AMSTERDAM, July 23, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – A world AIDS assembly opens in
Amsterdam on Monday hoping to harness the star power of activists Elton John
and Prince Harry to bolster the battle against an epidemic experts warn may
yet spiral out of control.
Thousands of delegates — researchers, campaigners, activists and people
living with the killer virus — will attend the 22nd International AIDS
Conference amid warnings that “dangerous complacency” may cause an
unstoppable resurgence.
In recent days, experts have alerted that new HIV infections, while down
overall, have surged in some parts of the world as global attention has waned
and funding has levelled off.
And they lamented that too sharp a focus on virus-suppressing treatment
may have diverted attention from basic prevention programmes such as condom
distribution, with the result that the AIDS-causing virus is still spreading
easily among vulnerable groups.
“The encouraging reductions in new HIV infections that occurred for about
a decade has emboldened some to declare that we are within reach of ending
AIDS,” Peter Piot, virus researcher and founder of the UNAIDS agency, said
last week.
However, “there is absolutely no evidence to support this conclusion,” he
insisted, and warned: “The language on ending AIDS has bred a dangerous
complacency.”
A UNAIDS report warned of a long and difficult road ahead even as it
reported a drop in new infections and AIDS deaths, and a record number of
people on life-saving antiretroviral therapy (ART).
These hard-fought gains could be reversed, experts said Sunday as the
finishing touches were put on the venue that will host some 15,000 delegates
— also including celebrities Charlize Theron and Conchita — for five days.
An alarming rate of new infections coupled with an exploding young
population in hard-hit countries could spell “a crisis of epic proportions,”
said Mark Dybul, a veteran American AIDS researcher and diplomat.
“Bad things will happen if we don’t have more money,” he told a pre-
conference, saying the world was “probably at the highest risk ever of losing
control of this epidemic.”
– ‘No’ to war on drugs –
Dybul and colleagues said donor and domestic funding has dropped
significantly and would likely continue to decline, from about 20.6 billion
euros ($24.1 billion) last year — most of it financed from the domestic
budgets of nations with the heaviest AIDS burden.
According to UNAIDS, the funding gap is almost $7 billion per year.
Under Donald Trump, the US administration has proposed massive spending
cuts, though these have so far failed to pass through Congress.
The United States is by far the biggest funder of the global AIDS
response.
The immune system-attacking HIV virus has infected nearly 80 million
people since the early 1980s. More than 35 million have died.
Today, data show the infection rate is rising in about 50 countries, and
has more than doubled in eastern Europe and central Asia.
Experts regret that the focus on prevention has faded.
Last year’s 1.8 million new infections showed that “unless we did
something completely drastic, we will not get anywhere near” the target of no
more than 500,000 in 2020, said Nduku Kilonzo of Kenya’s National AIDS
Control Council.
“We have a crisis and it is a prevention crisis,” she said.
At high risk are sex workers, gay men and people who inject drugs — many
of whom are forced onto society’s fringes by repressive laws in their
countries.
At the conference, NGOs will launch a liberalisation campaign titled:
“Just say no to the war on drugs,” a direct challenge to the 1980s Reagan
administration’s “Just say no” message at the height of America’s “war on
drugs”.
The programme’s criminalisation of drug use has compounded the stigma and
discrimination experienced by users.
BSS/AFP/MSY/0926 hrs