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Experts and activists meet in Amsterdam from Monday for the International AIDS Conference, at a time when "a dangerous complacency" is set against a disease that is better treated but still ravages.
Ending AIDS: The goal still seems far away today. Even though the number of HIV infections is declining, some countries, some regions see resurgences of the virus.
For badociations, the treatments that make it possible to live with HIV have [19459004Paradoxically detrimental to prevention
The figures " gave some people the guts to declare that the end of AIDS is at hand ," noted the researcher and former boss of UNAIDS Peter Piot in a conference call with journalists
"There is absolutely no evidence to support this idea," he says, warning against "dangerous complacency".
He and the authors of a report on the epidemic for the International AIDS Society (IAS) and the medical journal The Lancet are, according to him, " extremely worried to see the risk, real that the world can claim victory long before our fight against AIDS is over "
Next to celebrities like Prince Harry, actress Charlize Theron or singer Elton John, more than 15,000 delegates are expected in the Netherlands for this conference from Monday to Friday
The conference is an opportunity for scientists to debate the impact of recent advances, or setbacks, in the quest for better and better anti-HIV treatments simple.
After more than three decades of research, the virus remains incurable and without vaccine . It has infected some 80 million people since the beginning of the epidemic in the early 1980s.
Today, 36.9 million people living with HIV hoping that it does not get worse in AIDS. Nearly three out of five are taking antiretroviral therapy to prevent it, according to UNAIDS
For the first time since the beginning of the century, the annual death toll pbaded under one million in 2016 and in 2017.
" Strategic error "
But in about fifty countries, the infections are in rise lack of prevention, or because of repressive legislation against populations at risk (homobaduals, injecting drug users).
Prioritizing HIV treatment rather than prevention may have been "a strategic mistake", says IAS President, Linda-Gail Bekker
" There is no epidemic from which we came out with treatments ," she said, citing the Ebola virus or tuberculosis. " Clearly, a vaccine is the Grail, but we are not there yet "
She believes in the benefits of prevention : the condom, new needles for drug addicts, and preventive medicine.
Money, the sinews of war
After declining for two years, funding to low- and middle-income countries for the fight against AIDS increased in 2017 by 16 US $ 8.1 billion, according to figures from UNAIDS and the NGO Kaiser Family Foundation
The trend is " not expected to last ", according to them: the inflow comes from already budgeted funds that the United States had not spent in previous years. And President Donald Trump has promised to spend less money on it.
UNAIDS estimates $ 7 billion a year the shortfall in funding for AIDS to be no longer a threat to global public health in 2030.
To achieve this goal, number of new HIV cases and deaths will fall by 90% over 20 years.
" The job is not over ," warns Robert Matiru, the director of operations Unitaid, an international aid organization for medicines
Linda-Gail Bekker fears that the mobilization was " dispersed too quickly ". " Either we make progress against this epidemic, or we retreat ", she thinks.
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