Make AIDS History By 2031, World Conference Told by AFP / UN News / The Guardian 12:40pm 15th Aug, 2006   Toronto. August 14, 2006    Time has come for new phase in fight against Aids, conference told, by Sarah Boseley. (The Guardian)    Twenty-five years after the Aids pandemic began, the world has to move from crisis management to a sustained response that could mean keeping millions of impoverished people on costly drugs for 30 or 40 years, the head of UNAids was due to say yesterday at the start of the 16th International Aids conference.    In a speech prepared for last night"s opening session, at which 20,000 delegates gathered, Dr Peter Piot said the fight against Aids had to move into a new phase. Some 1.5 million people in the developing world are now on antiretroviral drugs, although a further 5 million need them now and there are 4 million new infections a year. Getting medicines to all who need them - a 2010 target for the G8 - was a major goal, but the world also had to think further ahead, he said: "Twenty, 30 or 40 years from now, we want them all still to be alive. Who is going to pay for that? Let"s start thinking in terms of decades and generations."    The first-line three-drug combination being rolled out in Africa has fallen in price to as little as $140 (£75) a year per patient. But second-line drugs, needed when the virus develops resistance to first-line medication, as has happened in the UK and US, are much more expensive.    Dr Piot said it was important to keep what he called the "exceptionality of Aids on the political agenda", because such a huge political effort was needed. He said Aids must not be seen as a normal medical issue, otherwise efforts such as preventing the spread of HIV would slacken.    Both treatment and prevention were needed, he said, and it was important to progress both scientifically and in speeding up social change.    A major issue for the conference, which is a forum for campaigners as much as for scientists, is likely to be the role of women in the developing world. The economic and social subservience of women is a big factor in the spread of the virus.    Stephen Lewis, the UN special envoy for HIV/Aids in Africa, said he was hoping the conference would herald "something absolutely irreversible on women".    Mr Lewis, the former Canadian ambassador to the UN who will speak at the close of the conference on Friday, said he hoped real change might come from a high-level panel on UN reform, of which Gordon Brown is a member, and which is weighing up plans for a UN women"s agency.    14 August 2006 (UN News)    With end of AIDS ‘nowhere in sight,’ UN official urges Toronto meeting to look ahead    As scientists, world leaders, activists and others gather in Toronto for the XVI International AIDS conference, the head of the UN agency responding to the disease today said it is time to move the world’s response to the epidemic to the next level by expanding the current crisis management model into a sustainable response plan that looks to the next 25 years and beyond.    “We will set ourselves up for demoralization and indeed for failure if we base our strategies on wishful thinking that the end of AIDS can be achieved any time soon,” said Dr. Peter Piot, Executive Director of the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). “Tragically, the end of AIDS is nowhere in sight.    Dr. Piot also delivered a message to the conference from Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who said it was important to sustain the momentum of the High-Level Meeting of the UN General Assembly earlier this year. The declaration adopted there pledged renewed efforts to tackle the causes of the epidemic and the forces that propel it, especially by increasing protection for vulnerable groups.    “This is a pivotal moment. After an unconscionably late start that cost tens of millions of lives and tore apart hundreds of millions more, the world’s response has finally gained real strength,” said Mr. Annan, who has personally championed efforts to halt the spread of the virus and treat those who have been infected or become ill.    “We need to accelerate this process,” he declared.    The theme of the XVI International Conference on HIV and AIDS, which is taking place from 13 to 18 August, is “Time to Deliver,” underscoring the urgency of effective HIV prevention, care and treatment as well as the need for increased accountability from individuals, governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and UN agencies.    Among the conference’s major themes is the need for the global AIDS response to focus on women and girls. Dr. Piot said it is important to address the social factors that continue to drive the epidemic, especially the low status of women, homophobia, HIV-related stigma, poverty and inequality.    “An AIDS response that is not as embedded in advancing social justice as in advancing science is doomed to failure,” he said.    UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Rima Salah, who is leading her agency’s delegation to the conference, said this week’s discussions were critical for children, who were still largely missing from positive reports on the global fight against HIV and AIDS. She called on world leaders to deliver an “AIDS-free” generation.    “A whole generation of young people today has never known a world free of HIV/AIDS,” said Ms. Salah. “It is a disease that has redefined childhood, forcing many of them to grow up alone, too fast and in many cases, sadly, not at all.”    August 14, 2006 (AFP)    The biggest AIDS summit opened with a call for the disease to be wiped out by 2031, as the world"s wealthiest man, Bill Gates, vowed to spur the fight against the killer of 25 million people.    More than 20,000 delegates packed the 16th International AIDS conference, encouraged by the success of therapies that at last are reaching Africa but with optimism tempered by warnings that the end of AIDS remains over the horizon.    The six-day biennial mix of science, knowledge-sharing and grassroots activism, spiced with politics and heart-searing testimony, debuted with a ceremony scanning the disease"s murderous first quarter-century.    "Don"t let there be a 50th anniversary of AIDS," the delegates, gathered in a darkened baseball stadium, were told, in a dreamy mock advertisement set in 2031.    Bill Gates, fresh from a new 500-million-dollar pledge to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, placed his faith for eradicating the disease in the hands of women -- and the potential of new microbicides and oral prevention drugs.    "We need tools that allow women to protect themselves," Gates said, in a keynote speech also delivered by his wife and co-philanthropist Melinda, after they were welcomed with a standing ovation.    "No matter where she lives, or what she does -- a woman should never need her partner"s permission to save her own life," Gates said.    Microbicides are a gel which would kill or block the AIDS virus in the vagina or anus. Researchers hope that the first successful cream could be available as soon as 2009.    "This could mark a turning point in the epidemic ... if we can discover these new preventative tools and deliver them quickly to the highest-risk populations, we could revolutionise the fight against AIDS."    But leaders in the fight against AIDS warned that signs of hope should not disguise the desperate battle ahead.    "Tragically, the end of AIDS is nowhere in sight," said Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS.    Another general in the anti-AIDS fight vented some of the political fury that has underpinned the 25-year struggle against AIDS, accusing Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper of snubbing the event.    "Mr Harper, the role of prime minister includes the responsibility to show leadership on the world stage," conference co-chair Mark Wainberg said to rousing cheers.    Underlying the human toll wreaked by AIDS, one Rwandan grandmother told AFP of her labor of love to bring up grandchildren, with her own offspring too sick to care for them.    Laurance Mukamurangwa, 48, nurtures five grandchildren aged three months to five years, despite being afflicted herself by HIV after she was raped.    "It"s really a problem for us because we don"t have anything and must get food, clothes and school supplies and you must remember that I am sick too and I will die," Mukamurangwa said on the sidelines of the conference.    Researchers thronged seminars ranging from the treatment of AIDS in war zones to hopes for a new generation of preventative treatments.    US doctors who took part in a massive scaleup of antiretroviral drugs in the Zambian capital of Lusaka reported how treatments were distributed to 16,000 patients, thanks in large part to US AIDS programme.    The drugs failed to save patients whose immune systems had been virtually wrecked by AIDS, but by the 18-month mark "the vast majority" of patients had been saved.    The conference is likely to reverberate with demands for governments to honour multi-billion-dollar pledges to combat the pandemic.    VIP highlights include former US president Bill Clinton and Hollywood actor Richard Gere -- who also took a shot at Harper on Sunday, comparing him to former US president Ronald Reagan, who recanted his early reluctance to fight AIDS while he was in office.    But despite the celebrity glitz, leaders in the struggle against AIDS warned that gains against the virus could evaporate without constant vigilance.    "The AIDS epidemic now matches the bubonic plague. Twenty-five million people have died," noted Catherine DeAngelis, editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).    At the end of last year, 38.6 million people were living with HIV which wrecks the body"s immune system and makes it vulnerable to opportunistic disease, UNAIDS reported in May. Visit the related web page
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