Scientists slam politics of Aids pandemic

Vienna: The 18th International Aids Conference that concluded in Vienna on Friday has opened up new fronts in a nearly three-decade-old campaign, but in the grim awareness that a battle-hardened enemy — the money crunch — is back.

The conference exposed a gulf between scientists and politicians on how to tackle the deadly human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) pandemic.

After six days of seminars, workshops and networking, Aids experts expressed frustration at a refusal by governments to adapt to new ways of looking at HIV and the people most at risk of contracting it.

However, delegates were strengthened by the most encouraging news in years.

Microbicide

Tests among volunteers in South Africa showed that a vaginal gel laced with an HIV-drug could help protect women against the Aids virus.

If confirmed in further work — and probably fine-tuned to boost its effectiveness — the microbicide would join the condom and male circumcision in protecting against HIV.

"We have shifted gears," said France's 2008 Nobel laureate, Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, who in 1983 helped identify HIV as the cause of Aids. "We now have a tool kit for preventing HIV, including antiretroviral drugs, and microbicides are emerging, with encouraging results on this front for the first time."

New objectives were set in treating patients with the famous ‘cocktail' of drugs that prevent HIV from replicating uncontrolled in immune cells, exposing the body to fatal opportunistic infections.

After a long study, the UN's World Health Organisation declared the therapy was safer and more effective than before, and issued guidelines for patients to be treated sooner after becoming infected.

UNAIDS, meanwhile, has drawn up proposals called ‘Treatment 2.0' designed to improve the Aids battle by developing more simplified drugs and delivery systems and using more community health workers.

But UNAIDS also reported that overall support for the Aids fight from donor nations flattened last year amid the financial crisis.

"The world has become numb to the toll of 7,400 new HIV infections every day," said Michel Sidibe, director of UNDAIDS. "We need to recover our sense of outrage."

In 2009, the gap between needs and funding from all sources was $7.7 billion, and so far, in 2010 — the year when the G8 pledged universal access to Aids drugs for all — the shortfall is more than $11 billion.

It is a stance that displays discrimination and criminal negligence, said Julio Montaner, president of the International Aids Society, who has led a drive at the conference to get politicians to wake up to the evidence.