Achieving Universal Access: The Way Forward
Business Wire, Dec 01, 2009
IAVI Calls for Strong and Sustained Global Investment in New HIV
Prevention Tools
NEW YORK — As we approach World AIDS Day, observed globally December 1, we are
reminded that while progress has been made in expanding access to
treatment and prevention and that progress has been made toward the
development of new prevention tools, the world is still falling short of
established targets for providing universal access to HIV and AIDS
prevention, treatment and care by 2010. Nearly 5.5 million of the
estimated 9.5 million people in need of antiretroviral therapy are still
not receiving it. Clearly, prevention efforts are falling short as well,
as evidenced by the fact that 7,400 people continue to become
HIV-infected every day. For every two people put on treatment, five new
HIV infections occur.
The world must continue to expand access to HIV and AIDS treatment and
care with the goal of getting these basics to everyone who needs them.
At the same time, we must not neglect HIV prevention. Prevention is
especially important for women. According to the World Health
Organization, AIDS-related illness is the leading cause of death and
disease among women of reproductive age in low- and middle-income
countries. A continued focus on existing prevention methods and a
sustained commitment to the development of new ones will make it much
more likely that the universal access targets on treatment and care can
be achieved.
A main barrier to increasing access to treatment and care is cost.
Recent modeling work conducted by the AIDS 2031 Costs and Financing
Working Group predicts that by 2031, more than 20 million more people
will become infected with HIVand thats the best-case scenario.
According to the projections, developing countries would need US $35
billion a yearthree times what is spent nowto address the pandemic.
Bettermuch betterprevention tools could bring the price tag down by
dramatically reducing the number of people who become infected with HIV
and thus require costly treatment and care. Traditionally, vaccines are
the most cost-effective, high-impact public health interventions for
coping with infectious disease. And an AIDS vaccine offers the best hope
of ending, and not just mitigating, the pandemic.
Thanks to the perseverance and hard work of thousands of individuals
around the world, significant progress has been made toward the
development of an AIDS vaccine in 2009. Unfortunately, these promising
advances are occurring just as AIDS vaccine research funding declined
for the first time in a decade, dropping 10% globally last year. At this
critical moment in science, the world must not step away from but step
up to the challenge. That challengenot just for scientists but for
policy makers, leaders of industry and fundersis to make the vital
investments to build on the tremendous momentum weve seen this year.
In late September, U.S. and Thai authorities announced that an AIDS
vaccine candidate for the first time demonstrated efficacy, albeit
modest, in humans in a Phase III trial in Thailand. Next researchers
will work to determine how, precisely, the candidate prevented infection
and how to prioritize ongoing research on the basis of the Thai results.
A few weeks earlier, researchers at and affiliated with IAVI announced
the discovery of two new antibodies capable of neutralizing a broad
range of HIV variants. These were the most potent and broadly
neutralizing antibodies to be identified in more than a decade and the
first to come from a donor in the developing world. This discovery may
accelerate ongoing work to develop an immunogen, or vaccine component,
which will elicit similarly powerful antibodies in humans.
And at an AIDS vaccine conference in Paris in October, more promising
data were released. New findings shed light on the characteristics of
the particular variant of HIV that is transmitted from one person to
another. A study of heterosexual transmission demonstrated a bottleneck
effect, whereby only a single founder virus takes hold in most cases.
This may be good news for vaccine design because it could mean that an
HIV vaccine would not have to neutralize every variant of HIV but only
the viruses that are transmitted from one person to another
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Dec 5, 2009
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