HIV Prevention Worldwide
What is the global status of HIV?
HIV internationally is a huge problem of course. There are about 40 million people infected worldwide. OF that 40 million, at least 15 million probably should be on antiretroviral therapy, their CD4 count would be at a point where they should be on therapy, and only about 1.5 million are. So about 10% of those that should be on therapy actually are. There's a tremendous amount of suffering and dying going on in resource-limited settings. However, the good news is that over the last 3 years, the amount of people in treatment has gone up enormously. Partly this is through the auspices of Khofi Annan's global fund for AIDS, TB, and malaria, which has funded antiretroviral therapy for hundreds of thousands of patients, and the PEPFAR funds, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, George Bush's 16 billion over 5 years that he announced earlier in his 1st term. So the situation is improving rapidly, but there is a very long way to go. If everybody is gonna be treated who needs to be treated, the rich countries of the world are going to have to produce a lot more, PIPFAR will have to be reauthorize and probably doubled, and other countries in the Western world are going to have to increase their aid to HIV if we're ever going to achieve what we need to achieve.
How are other countries handling HIV prevention?
A country's success in preventing and treating AIDS depends very much on the attitude of the government. Successful poor countries have been Uganda, Thailand and Brazil, where the government has taken lead and done a lot of prevention advertising, provided their people with anti-retroviral therapy and encouraged them to come forward for testing. However, there are countries where HIV is an absolute disaster such as South Africa, where the government's attitude, at least up until very recently, has been very poor, and Russia, where up until recently their attitude has also been very poor. But more and more governments are starting to address the problem. About three years ago, China and India started to make major policy changes to test and treat people with HIV. So overall there are a lot of positives, but there's a lot more to be done in various countries with regards to handling HIV prevention.
