Michael Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS, said the gap in access to HIV
treatment should be closed both within and between countries.
Sidibe called for better delivery on the ground, a reduction in the number of
years it now takes to turn scientific discoveries into actual progress for the
poor, and increased cooperation among states, pharmaceutical companies and
international organizations.
"We must use innovation to overcome social division and inequity," he said at
the opening of an international AIDS conference in Rome.
In Africa, the hardest hit continent, 6.6 million people are now on AIDS
medication, but 9 million people eligible for treatment are on waiting lists,
according to the World Health Organization. In the United States, many state
assistance programs that help people access AIDS medications also have waiting
lists.
"Most of those people don't know what'll happen to them. Do we tell them that
they should die?" Sidibe said. "Having 9 million people wait day and night with
their families is morally wrong. It is socially unacceptable."
The conference opened a few days after the announcement of a significant
scientific breakthrough in stopping the spread of the virus: Two studies
conducted in Africa showed that an antiretroviral drug made by United States
firm Gilead Sciences already known to help prevent the spread of the virus in
gay men also works for heterosexual men and women, researchers said. One of the
studies showed the drug lowered the risk of infection for those believed to be
regularly taking the pills by roughly 78 percent, the researcher reported.
In both studies, participants were also offered counseling and free condoms,
which may help explain the relatively low overall infection rate.
According to figures provided at the conference, more than 25 million people
have died of AIDS-related illnesses since the beginning of the pandemic 30 years
ago, and an estimated 33.3 million people are currently living with HIV. Every
day, 7,000 people across the world are infected, and more than 4,900 die from
AIDS-related illness.
Even as conference speakers hailed the encouraging scientific advances,
questions remained unanswered: How to make sure people remain on treatment, how
to achieve universal coverage and how to reduce the risk of people abandoning
condoms? Sidibe said these questions needed urgent answers.
And, he added, any discovery must be translated more quickly into policies
accessible to those who need treatments, particularly in poor nations. Sidibe
also said any trade agreement that would limit access to medication, especially
generic ones, should be opposed.
That concern was shared by Elly Katabira, the president of the International
AIDS Society and conference chair, who said: "I hope our voice will be heard in
asking that access to all drugs, including generic drugs, will not be diminished
by new laws or regulations anywhere in the world."
Gilead Sciences Inc., based in California, is a major producer of AIDS drugs.
Two of its pills — Truvada and Viread — were used in the recent studies
conducted in Botswana, Kenya and Uganda. The company has recently agreed to
allow a range of its AIDS drugs to be made by generic manufacturers, potentially
increasing their availability in poor countries.
The conference organized by IAS gathers some 5,000 researchers, scientists,
clinicians and public health experts. It runs through Wednesday.