12.01.2005
World AIDS Day 2005
Today is World AIDS Day. In the Washington Post, an interesting pair of op-eds from Jim Yong Kim, now of WHO, and Richard Holbrooke, former US ambassador. Kim looks at the latest statistics and finds some reason for hope: the vastly expanded access to treatment with antiretroviral therapy for people living with the disease. Holbrooke acknowledges the importance of treatment but urges the international community to scale up prevention, particularly through expanded testing programs.
But what Holbrooke doesn't address is the fact that there is little incentive for people to get tested in the absence of treatment. You have to do both. From a human rights perspective: you can't force people to get tested, and the state does have an obligation to provide life-saving therapy. Antiretrovirals are not optional, they have to be a part of any strategy. Of course testing is crucial, but in the US, where 1/3rd of people who are HIV positive do not know their status, we haven't put treatment on hold until they all get tested. Why should any other government have to make that choice.
It's World AIDS Day, but I don't feel hopeless because even in the last 5 years, so much has changed in the global pandemic. Treatment is more doable and cheaper all the time, there are extremely cheap and effective interventions to prevent mother to child transmission, and microbicides are in human trials. Of course there are so many more people infected and epidemics taking off in new places, and so many young lives lost, and all of this is sobering. But not hopeless.
But what Holbrooke doesn't address is the fact that there is little incentive for people to get tested in the absence of treatment. You have to do both. From a human rights perspective: you can't force people to get tested, and the state does have an obligation to provide life-saving therapy. Antiretrovirals are not optional, they have to be a part of any strategy. Of course testing is crucial, but in the US, where 1/3rd of people who are HIV positive do not know their status, we haven't put treatment on hold until they all get tested. Why should any other government have to make that choice.
It's World AIDS Day, but I don't feel hopeless because even in the last 5 years, so much has changed in the global pandemic. Treatment is more doable and cheaper all the time, there are extremely cheap and effective interventions to prevent mother to child transmission, and microbicides are in human trials. Of course there are so many more people infected and epidemics taking off in new places, and so many young lives lost, and all of this is sobering. But not hopeless.
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