Halting AIDS vs. denying it
The juxtaposition of two of today’s headlines pertaining to AIDS in Africa is glaring. One touted a new strategy for HIV testing that could slow, if not altogether halt the spread of the virus, while the other released the devastating findings of a Harvard University study which linked 365,000 premature deaths to former South African ...
The juxtaposition of two of today's headlines pertaining to AIDS in Africa is glaring. One touted a new strategy for HIV testing that could slow, if not altogether halt the spread of the virus, while the other released the devastating findings of a Harvard University study which linked 365,000 premature deaths to former South African President Thabo Mbeki's refusal to acknowledge scientific evidence of HIV/AIDS's viral capability.
The juxtaposition of two of today’s headlines pertaining to AIDS in Africa is glaring. One touted a new strategy for HIV testing that could slow, if not altogether halt the spread of the virus, while the other released the devastating findings of a Harvard University study which linked 365,000 premature deaths to former South African President Thabo Mbeki’s refusal to acknowledge scientific evidence of HIV/AIDS’s viral capability.
The study’s findings, published in The New York Times yesterday, blamed the South African government and, in particular Mbeki, for not only being lax in making the anti-retroviral drugs widely available but for flatly denying their importance. Mbeki’s claimed that AIDS was caused by malnutrition and that treatments were toxic.
The promising new treatment model, which proposes a combo of HIV screening of every adult and treatment for all those who test positive, was published this week in the British journal Lancet.
If employed successfully, the study predicts that “transmission rates would fall from 20 new cases per 1,000 people per year to 1 case per 1,000 in about a decade.” A biostatistician at WHO, Reuben M. Granich, said that if aggressively pursued, the testing-and-treatment approach could be “the greatest strategy for reducing transmission” of HIV.
While the method and implication of such widespread, regular testing (even if on a voluntary basis) has raised eyebrows and serious doubts about its viability, at least it offers a certain rational and sense of control. Treatments of this kind are part of the reason why the World Health Organization predicts fewer AIDS fatalities in the next two decades. Previous attempts at prevention techniques in many African countries — sex education, abstaining, information about circumcision — haven’t proved successful.
And in the face of blatant ignorance like Mbeki’s, why would anyone be surprised?
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