Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1999. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
San Francisco Chronicle - Friday, November 26, 1999
The report by the United Nations AIDS program, released in preparation for the 12th annual World AIDS Day on December 1, found that 33.6 million men, women and children have AIDS or are infected with the HIV virus.
More than two-thirds are in sub-Saharan Africa, and for the first time, more women and girls are being infected than men and boys. U.N. officials noted that the HIV infection rate has doubled in only two years in the former Soviet Union, largely because of shared needle use by intravenous drug users. The infection rate also is growing in Southeast Asia, where AIDS as an epidemic has hardly been on the radar screen.
Since the epidemic began, 16.3 million people -- 13.7 million in sub-Saharan Africa -- have died of AIDS.
No part of the world is immune, although success has varied in prevention and availability of drugs that fight AIDS. Many national leaders, particularly in hard-hit Africa, have been slow or outright reckless in response to the disease. Combinations of newly devel oped antiviral drugs have helped cut the AIDS death rate in the United States in half since 1996. Even in the prosperous United States, those drugs are prohibitively expensive for many people, costing more than $1,000 a month. In poorer countries, the drugs are far out of reach.
Anti-AIDS activists are attempting to use little-known World Trade Organization rules to bypass patent protections and sell AIDS drugs at a cheaper rate to poor countries. The drug industry, not surprisingly, is fighting what they see as an end-run around patent laws.
The drugmakers argue that leaders in Africa and elsewhere have made AIDS eradication too low a priority, and they imply that those countries could find the money for the drugs if they were so inclined.
Some of those arguments hold weight, and leaders in a number of countries have been derelict in using resources or their authority to curb AIDS. Still, there is no getting around the fact that the drugs are too expensive for many Third World countries. Drugmakers, doctors, government leaders and individuals need to work together to eliminate the scourge of AIDS.
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