The World Health Organization will unveil a dramatic plan today that economists say will save more than 11 million lives by 2015 at a cost of roughly $1.1 trillion. By 2020, they say, the approach would save 8 million lives every year. The seemingly costly package of health interventions would end up fueling broad econ
Widespread misuse of anti-HIV drugs has led to drug resistance in at least half the population under treatment for the disease in the United States , scientists are reporting today. Most striking, researchers said, is the demographic breakdown of drug resistance. Contrary to forecasts made in 1996 when combination drug
Though the events of Sept. 11 diverted global attention from the pandemic, HIV has ignited in new regions and now infects 40 million people. In its annual state-of-the-world report released yesterday, the United Nations AIDS Programme issued new estimates of the scope of the pandemic, highlighting concern about surges
Angry that the Bush administration was willing to force price reductions for Bayer s anti-anthrax treatment, Cipro, but unwilling to exercise similar clout to reduce the cost of AIDS drugs, the leaders of 60 poor nations teamed with activists worldwide to challenge the World Trade Organization meeting today in Doha,
Scientists have discovered that a minuscule mutation in one gene makes the influenza virus far more dangerous and pathogenic. Using a revolutionary technique, University of Wisconsin researchers also have managed to build and manipulate their own flu viruses. And another research team from Australian National Universit
Even as scientists searching for an AIDS vaccine convene today in Philadelphia, many leading researchers warn that newfound optimism in the field may rest on rocky, even dangerously misleading, science. The optimism stems from three alleged breakthrough vaccines announced over the last year, and a fourth to be unveiled
Atlanta - Health professionals hoping to slow the American AIDS epidemic find themselves at a crossroads, at which the treatments that allow individuals with HIV to live longer also raise enormous challenges for preventing further spread of the virus. We are at a transition point in HIV prevention in so many ways, Dr.
Atlanta - Oral sex poses an extremely low risk of HIV infection, according to a study released yesterday at the second National HIV Prevention Conference here. Kimberly Page Schafer and her colleagues at the University of California at San Francisco have reached that conclusion after two years of searching for someone
Atlanta - Scott Evertz, director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy, confronted an openly skeptical audience yesterday in the first public speech of his four-month tenure. Evertz, unofficially known as White House AIDS czar, was interrupted repeatedly as he addressed the Second National HIV Prevention Co
Atlanta - New York City is on the verge of further reducing the spread of HIV between drug users through needle-exchange programs, with only Queens and Staten Island standing in the way, experts are expected to announce here today. The needle-exchange programs, permitted under New York State law since 1992 and implemen
United Nations-The UN General Assembly last night endorsed a 103- point global plan of action against AIDS. Despite vigorous debate and controversy, the nations of the world agreed to a remarkably detailed document that sets timetables for achievement of AIDS control goals, the most ambitious of which is a 25 percent r
United Nations-After weeks of heated backroom debate culminating in an angry confrontation that nearly sank the UN General Assembly s attempt to reach consensus on how to tackle the AIDS pandemic, an agreement was reached last night. The draft declaration will be subject to open debate and a final vote today, but the m
United Nations-Called to deal with the gravity of the global HIV crisis, the UN General Assembly Special Session on AIDS instead yesterday was consumed by debate over homosexuality. The draft AIDS resolution, favored by the UNAIDS Programme and all UN agencies, came under attack from the Arab League and other Muslim na
Political leaders, scientists, activists, media members and humanitarian relief experts are pouring into New York City today to attend what may be the largest United Nations gathering ever staged. The subject is AIDS. It is the first time in the history of the United Nations that the General Assembly has convened to di
Conquering the AIDS pandemic would cost about $9.2 billion a year starting in 2005, with roughly half of that money spent on treatment, according to a report in today s issue of the journal Science. A team of scientists and economists, working at the behest of the United Nations AIDS Programme in Geneva, has developed
Two decades into the AIDS crisis, a sense of urgency has emerged. The toll in the countries of Africa has at last brought a halt to business as usual. Much of the world s political and scientific leadership are in seeming unison, calling for a level of funding sufficient, at least theoretically, to bring the pandemic t
Two decades into the AIDS crisis, a sense of urgency has emerged. The toll in the countries of Africa has at last brought a halt to business as usual. Much of the world s political and scientific leadership are in seeming unison, calling for a level of funding sufficient, at least theoretically, to bring the pandemic t
A bill authorizing $700 million over the next two years to combat HIV, tuberculosis and malaria in poor countries was introduced yesterday by a bipartisan quartet of senators. The International Infectious Diseases Control Act calls for $200 million for next year and another $500 million for 2003, to be placed in a glob
New York City-based Pfizer Inc. announced yesterday that it will give its life-prolonging drug fluconazole free to 55 poor nations and assist in drug delivery and development of an infrastructure and staff to treat patients in five of those countries. At a news conference at United Nations headquarters, Pfizer chief ex
TWO YEARS BEFORE the virus that causes AIDS was discovered, physicians in the United States and Europe realized that the defining symptom of the mysterious new disease was the loss of a specific immune system cell population, called CD4 cells. Twenty years later scientists still don t know what kills the cells. And its
FOR AT LEAST 17 years it has been known that the epidemic form of HIV has less deadly, close cousins, found in people, apes and monkeys. What is still not known is why these viruses impacts are less devastating. Somewhere in the solution of that puzzle, scientists insist, lie clues that could be vital to the developmen
WE DESPERATELY need a vaccine for AIDS, U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher said last week, and we must move more aggressively in that direction. On this, the 20th anniversary of the discovery of AIDS, forecasters predict that without an effective HIV vaccine, within 20 years the pandemic will be killing 6,427,000 Afri
Three months ago, making his first public comments on the global AIDS pandemic, President George W. Bush said his administration s primary goal is to find a cure for this disease -- a feat thought by scientists today to be all but impossible within the boundaries of contemporary biological science. The president s comm
Today, with the AIDS epidemic 20 years old, about 37 million people are suffering from various stages of HIV-induced immune system problems. Twenty years into the future, according to some forecasts, the pool of human beings living with AIDS-weakened immune systems could well exceed 200 million. And that has some biolo
Economics is driving the mission of the leader of global health, Gro Harlem Brundtland, because, she says, money is at the heart of the AIDS crisis. Brundtland, the former prime minister of Norway , was named director general of the World Health Organization a year and a half ago. Since then, she has cornered minis
Laurie Garrett and Curtis L. Taylor, Staff Writers
Nobody has a sense of urgency about this plague, Larry Kramer, the Tony Award-winning playwright and AIDS activist, said in an interview. And that s been the problem from Day One! Don t tell Kramer the American AIDS epidemic is under control or a declining problem. Between fits of hacking cough brought on by at least
Economics is driving the mission of the leader of global health, Gro Harlem Brundtland, because, she says, money is at the heart of the AIDS crisis. Brundtland, the former prime minister of Norway , was named director general of the World Health Organization a year and a half ago. Since then, she has cornered minis
Most Americans are now significantly less concerned about the AIDS epidemic than they were a few years ago, a new survey shows, but their increasing comfort stands in sharp contrast to the reality. The survey finds that 26 percent of respondents named AIDS as the most important health problem facing the nation, compare
Immaculately attired, a glass of Bordeaux in her hand, Dr. Mathilde Krim grimaces at the question: What is the future of the AIDS pandemic? Krim has devoted the past two decades of her life to combating HIV. It s a battle without many victories. That is too terrible to consider, she says. The Swiss-born founder of the
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan yesterday called for creation of a multibillion-dollar global trust fund for treatment and prevention of the world s AIDS pandemic. Annan s plea, issued as the annual meeting of the Organization for African Unity convened in Abuja, Nigeria , resonated in Congress as Secret
Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates, along with the leaders of other foundations that play prominent roles in combatting AIDS, issued a warning Friday that escalating HIV treatment efforts in poor countries, without commensurate increases in prevention campaigns, will not succeed. His press conference came two days after
A coalition of 128 members of the Harvard University faculty yesterday proposed a multibillion-dollar plan for treating AIDS patients in poor countries, primarily in Africa. It calls for rich countries to create an HIV/AIDS Prevention and Treatment Trust Fund, which would purchase discounted anti-HIV drugs to be distri
Expensive drug cocktails used to treat people with HIV disease pay for themselves by prolonging patients lives and labor productivity, and by decreasing their hospitalization costs, according to two studies in today s New England Journal of Medicine. If the price of anti-HIV drug cocktails was reduced significantly, to
Officials in San Francisco will soon hold hearings on whether to ban public advertising of prescription drugs used to treat AIDS. They are concerned that the advertising s images of healthy looking young men engaged in an active lifestyle is contributing to a lessening of concern in the gay community about the fatal da
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