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Former US President Bill Clinton pleaded on Friday for the world not to give up on fighting the AIDS-causing HIV virus, which still kills nearly a million people each year. "I beg you, it's something we can not let down," said Clinton on the final day of the 22nd International AIDS Conference, which brought together some 15,000 researchers, activists and HIV-infected people
"By a combination of complacency in some places, and open hostility to multinational cooperation efforts in others, there is a serious risk that many people will say: Let's stop doing that Bill Clinton, a longtime activist in the fight against AIDS, said:
940,000 deaths
In 2017, the infection killed 940,000 people and among the 36.9 million people who lived with the virus, an estimated 15.2 million did not have access to adequate treatment. "About 35 people will die while I'm here talking," said Clinton, noting that according to the UN, 1.8 million people were newly infected in 2017 with HIV.
After Over three decades of research, the virus that attacks the immune system and causes AIDS remains incurable and unvaccinated. It has contaminated some 80 million people since the beginning of the epidemic in the early 1980s.
A decrease in intensity in the fight against the disease would have "devastating" consequences and would support "the chances of a return to epidemic proportions with vertiginous negative consequences, "insisted the former US president. The return of an epidemic could "derail health conditions and ruin the economic and social goals of many countries, leaving behind a devastated landscape," he said. It's "almost certain" that an HIV vaccine and a cure for AIDS are at hand, "but we're not there yet, we have to hold on," Clinton said.
(The Essential / afp)
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