AEGiS-PRn: AHF Questions Push for More AIDS Vaccine Funding While World Awaits ARV Treatment: 95% of Those in Need of Treatment Worldwide Still Lack Access to Life-Saving ARVs

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2006. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

AHF Questions Push for More AIDS Vaccine Funding While World Awaits ARV Treatment: 95% of Those in Need of Treatment Worldwide Still Lack Access to Life-Saving ARVs

PRNewswire - January 26, 2006

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) the largest US-based AIDS organization which operates free AIDS treatment clinics in the US, Africa, Central America and Asia, today challenged a public call at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to double global funding for AIDS vaccine development -- up to $1.2 billion annually from approximately $680 million -- while 95% of those living with HIV/AIDS worldwide currently lack access to anti-retroviral AIDS drugs, a proven and increasingly affordable life-saving treatment. Despite the more than half a billion spent annually so far on vaccine research, no effective AIDS vaccine has been developed to date, due in part to the complexity and adaptability of the virus. Many experts believe it may be a decade or more before any significant progress is made in this arena.

"Considering that ARV treatment is still beyond the reach of most people with AIDS in the world, I seriously question the value of increasing AIDS vaccine funding at a time when researchers have not as yet produced any real results in vaccine development and no significant breakthroughs appear to be on the horizon," said Michael Weinstein, President of AIDS Healthcare Foundation. "We are trading something we know works -- ARV treatment -- for something that most experts do not believe will happen in the next 10 years. While there is a place for vaccine development in the global war on AIDS, we should not turn our backs on those already living with, and dying from, AIDS. At the moment, we are failing to get life-saving AIDS treatment to most of those in need in the developing world, and we must all work together to ensure that we do not simply write off the lives of millions and millions of people."

Of the more than 40 million people worldwide living with HIV/AIDS, fewer than two million are on ARV treatment, most of which live in developed countries.

SOURCE AIDS Healthcare Foundation

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