Anti-HIV/AIDS moves with funding shortfall for epidemic treatment (2)

At the AIDS Conference, Michal Sidibe, the UNAIDS executive director, spoke on the urgency for a new approach to antiretroviral treatment and introduced Treatment 2.0 which radically simplifies treatment… The New UNAIDS Outlook report outlines a radically simplified HIV treatment platform called Treatment 2.0 -- that could decrease the number of AIDS-related deaths drastically and could also greatly reduce the number of new HIV infections.

Sub-Sahara Africa has accounted for two thirds of all infected people, and the area in Africa south of the Sahara Desert, known as sub-Sahara Africa, is a region that has just over 10 percent of the world's population but is home to 67 percent of all people living with the virus. An estimated 5.7 million people were living with HIV/AIDS in South Africa in 2009, more than any other country in the world. South Africa has the highest number of people living with HIV in the world (5.7 million) at present, and almost one in five South African adults is the HIV positive.

South Africa's Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe, who is also chair of the South African National AIDS Council (SANAC), said on Sunday that his cabinet has approved of the new HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment funding despite a decreased government income due to the negative impact of the global financial crisis.

To date, the South African government has, as a matter of course, increased a budget from the previous year to approximately 900 million Rands (nearly 120 million US dollars) a year over a two-year period for the HIV/AIDES prevention. And the National HIV prevention and treatment program will receive an additional 5.4 billion Rands (about 700 million US dollars) in the next three years, and the special allocations could reach as high as 8 billion Rands (some 1.05 billion dollars) in this regard aster a three-year period.

Noting the fight against HIV/AIDES needs close international coordination and cooperation, Deputy President Motlanthe told delegates that the investment had become vital in "realizing the right to health", and he appealed to the aid donors not to lower or reduce their investment in medical service in poor recipient countries.

By People's Daily Online and contributed by PD resident reporters in Germany and South Africa Liu Huaxin and Pei Guangjiang

【1】 【2】