‘Dangerous complacency may cause AIDS resurgence’

PARIS: Thousands of experts and activists descend on Amsterdam on Monday to bolster the battle against AIDS amid warnings that “dangerous complacency” may cause a resurgence of the epidemic that has killed 35 million people.

Rather than closing in on the goal of “ending” AIDS, new HIV infections surged in parts of the world as global attention dwindled and funding levelled off, said anti-AIDS movement leaders.

They lament that too fine a focus on virus-suppressing treatment overshadowed basic prevention, resulting in the spread of HIV among the most vulnerable people.

“The encouraging reductions in new HIV infections that occurred for about a decade has emboldened some to declare that we are within reach of ending AIDS,” said Peter Piot, a veteran virus researcher and founder of the UNAIDS agency.

However, “there is absolutely no evidence to support this conclusion,” he insisted, and warned: “the language on ending AIDS has bred a dangerous complacency”.

This was evident from declining global and domestic funding for HIV eradication and treatment programmes, Piot said at the launch this week of a report by the International AIDS Society and The Lancet medical journal.

The report’s authors, he said, “are extremely concerned that there is a real risk that the world will declare victory long before our fight against AIDS is over”.

Rubbing shoulders with celebrity activists such as actress Charlize Theron, Britain’s Prince Harry and singers Elton John and Conchita, more than 15,000 delegates are expected in the Dutch capital for the conference, opening on Monday.

While high-profile speeches will seek to revive the flagging fight, the five-day event will present an opportunity for scientists to mull over recent advances and setbacks in the quest for simpler, better anti-HIV drugs.

More than three decades of research have yet to yield a cure or vaccine for the AIDS-causing virus that has infected nearly 80 million people since the epidemic began in the early 1980s.

A UNAIDS report on Wednesday said about 36.9 million people last year were living with the virus which, thanks to antiretroviral therapy, was no longer a death sentence. It reported the lowest annual death toll in two decades, and a record number of people on life-saving treatment.

But the report also alerted that new HIV infections were rising in about 50 countries, and had more than doubled in eastern Europe and central Asia.