CONTROLLING HIV INFECTION

Controlling HIV Infection

Controlling HIV Infection

Introduction

AIDS is an unprecedented global crisis. It requires an unprecedented response from each and every one of us.

The world has known about AIDS for twenty years. During that time the disease has spread to every continent. In the worst affected countries, it has back human progress by decades. But over the past twenty years we have also learnt a great deal about how to tackle AIDS. The most important lesson has been that half-measures do not work against this epidemic.

The only way the epidemic can be reversed is through a total social mobilization. Leadership from above needs to meet creativity, energy, and leadership from below, joining together in a co-ordinated programme of sustained social action.

AIDS, particularly more than 13 million orphans.

Within the United Nations system, the Global Strategy Framework on HIV/AIDS will provide guidance for the next phase. It draws on lessons from the past to map out the path for the future.

The AIDS pandemic is diverse, but a common understanding of its causes and dynamics will help to promote a shared sense of the urgency and scale of the response needed.

Effective drug treatments

The first drug licensed for fighting HIV was zidovudine, better known as AZT, which gained approval in 1987. Multiple studies found that AZT reduced opportunistic infections and increased CD4+ cell counts and survival among people with AIDS. However, the positive effects of AZT did not last very long, and a major investigation known as the Concorde Study found that people who started taking the drug at an early stage of HIV infection, before the onset of symptoms, received little or no long-term benefit (though neither did they fare any worse).

Since the mid-1990s, other types of anti-HIV drugs have also been available, including protease inhibitors, which were designed specifically to target ...