Durban Aids summit to warn of lagging effort
Elton John, Britain’s Prince Harry will host discussions on HIV epidemic among youth
Sixteen years after Nelson Mandela galvanised the world to take up the fight against Aids, experts and activists return to the South African city of Durban tomorrow, seeking to revitalise the fight against the disease.
Some 18,000 scientists, campaigners, funders and lawmakers are descending on the port city for the five-day 21st International AIDS Conference — a council of war on a pandemic that has claimed more than 30 million lives in 35 years.
Singer Elton John and Britain’s Prince Harry will host a session at the conference discussing the HIV epidemic among young people. “The message from Durban to the world is going to be that it’s too soon to declare victory. We have a long way to go,” International AIDS Society president Chris Beyrer told AFP.
Until 2000, only wealthier countries had hosted the biennial AIDS meeting.
That all changed when South Africa became the first developing country — and the first with an unbridled epidemic of HIV in its population — to take the helm.
The conference was a highly-charged affair, but its emotional zap transformed the AIDS campaign.
Campaigners fired verbal volleys at Big Pharma, accusing drugs companies of providing life-saving drugs to HIV patients in rich countries but ignoring counterparts in poor economies.
And South African activists angrily levelled accusations of AIDS-denialism at then-president Thabo Mbeki, who insisted the disease was caused by poverty, not by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
The star-studded cast in Durban was headed by Mbeki’s predecessor Mandela, who described the epidemic as “one of the greatest threats humankind has faced.”
Surge of energy
The surge of energy from Durban helped launch a string of programmes to provide life-saving drugs for the Third World and dynamise research into new frontiers.
But 16 years after Durban, there are fears that HIV, by becoming a chronic but manageable disease, has become like wallpaper.
With no cure for the virus in sight, patients face lifelong reliance on expensive anti-retroviral drugs which cause side effects.
The United Nations has set a target of ending the AIDS pandemic by 2030, but warned that efforts are lagging.
Infection rates are rising in many regions of the world, the UNAIDS agency said, with Russia especially hard hit.
There are some 36.7 million people worldwide living with HIV/AIDS, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa.
Of these, only 17 million are receiving treatment.
“We have to reach the other 20 million people living with HIV, and that’s going to take resources,” said Beyrer.
New infections globally fell six per cent since 2010 — from 2.2 million to 2.1 million, and Aids-related deaths have almost halved from their peak, at two million, in 2005.
Infections are soaring in North Africa and the Middle East, which now has the fastest-growing epidemic.