Experts in fighting the global AIDS pandemic are confronting a new and unexpected front in the war on this disease—the economic downturn, which has resulted in cuts to HIV prevention, care and treatment programs in the U.S. and poses a significant risk to HIV programs in resource-strained countries in the Caribbean, Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
Meeting Sept. 22 in Washington at the 2011 National HIV/AIDS Summit—a major international scientific and policy conference hosted by the Forum for Collaborative HIV Research—nearly 100 leading research scientists, advocates, members of industry and global health leaders cautioned policymakers that despite the extraordinary progress in the fight against HIV disease, the pandemic is still not under control and is a major drain on the economies of both developed and developing nations. Currently, there are 33 million people worldwide living with HIV, including 1.2 million people in the U.S., and each year, approximately 2.6 million new HIV infections and 1.8 million HIV-related deaths occur worldwide.
Now part of the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health and based in Washington, D.C., the Forum was founded in 1997 as the outgrowth of a White House initiative. Representing government, industry, patient advocates, healthcare providers, foundations and academia, the Forum is a public/private partnership that organizes roundtables and issues reports on a range of global HIV/AIDS issues. See www.hivforum.org for details on the summit.