Don’t let Trump kill HIV fight
IT DOES not seem so long ago that AIDS was viewed as the greatest challenge facing the planet.
Whole populations in Africa and Asia were threatened with wipe-out. Europeans who contracted the disease also faced an inevitable – and agonising – death.
It was terrifying that something so deadly had no cure – yet it was most likely to affect young healthy people.
Now, HIV infection, which leads to AIDS if left untreated, is manageable. This week, we learned that deaths linked to AIDS have almost halved since 2005. Worldwide, 36.7million are living with HIV and most are surviving.
Vast sums of money went into research. Entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates joined governments to fund drug distribution. Education campaigns helped change behaviour that put people at risk. East and southern Africa, once the most at-risk part of the world, has managed to cut HIV infections by nearly a third since 2010.
And the science does not stop. In America, researchers have found that cows can manufacture antibodies to the AIDS virus faster than humans. This could lead to a vaccine.
But we should not be complacent. The fall in annual deaths between 2005 and today was from 1.9million to one million. Not good enough.
Unfortunately, progress in beating AIDS is at risk because of a funding shortfall under Donald Trump’s proposed cuts to global health projects.
The AIDS charity Kaiser Family Foundation warn that the 2018 Trump budget could deprive some 830,000 people, mostly in Africa, of life-saving drugs.
Since the epidemic erupted in the 80s, 76.1million people have been infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Some 35million have died. Many left infected orphans behind.
We still have more to do. Half of all sufferers still need access to drugs.
The world was making progress. Then Trump landed. He is a plague on the planet.