USIS Washington File - December 1, 2006
Charlene Porter, USINFO Staff Writer

U.S. agencies leading the nation's campaign against the disease focus on "the promise of partnerships" on AIDS Day 2006, emphasizing the "critical role" that every individual can play, either as a professional involved in research and care or as a friend or family member of a person living with the HIV virus.

Partnership is not just a theme, but a strategy for fighting the disease and reaching the afflicted in the developing world, according to President Bush's AIDS Day statement.

"Through the New Partners Initiative, we are supporting faith-based and community organizations that offer much of the health care in the developing world, so that we can reach more people more effectively," the statement says.

The president first announced the New Partners Initiative on World AIDS Day 2005, describing it as a plan to engage more groups in the campaign against the disease in the developing world and to strengthen local health care capacity to maintain a sustained effort helping those suffering from HIV/AIDS and its consequences. (See related article.)

The president commemorated AIDS Day 2006 with a roundtable discussion December 1 involving U.S. leaders working against the disease, and representatives of organizations in Cote d'Ivoire, Botswana and Namibia who are participating in U.S.-backed partnerships against the disease. The president said in a brief appearance after his discussion that 800,000 people are now receiving AIDS treatment under the five-year, $15 billion President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) program. The number receiving treatment has been growing steadily since PEPFAR became operational in 2004. Within its five-year mandate, the PEPFAR goal is to provide treatment to 2 million people.

In her AIDS Day statement, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the emphasis on partnership is key to the success of PEPFAR.

"Success is possible only where there is leadership and commitment by governmental and nongovernmental sectors in host nations, and it is exciting to see the growing leadership and commitment to fighting AIDS in hard-hit nations," according to the Rice statement issued from Jordan.

THE GLOBAL PROBLEM

A global survey conducted by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS estimates that there are 39.5 million people in the world carrying the virus, with 4.3 million new infections in 2006. (See related article.)

Participating in an AIDS Day webchat on USINFO, Dr. Amita Gupta, deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Clinical Global Health Education, gave those abstract statistics tangible immediacy.

"This means every eight seconds somebody in the world is infected with HIV, resulting in 11,000 people becoming newly infected every day," wrote Gupta in the online forum.

A World AIDS Day statement from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) emphasized the agencies ongoing research in HIV infection, HIV-associated opportunistic infections, malignancies and other complications surrounding the disease.

NIH, the world's largest public investor in AIDS research, also continues a multipronged effort to develop a vaccine against the disease. At the same time, scientists continue work to identify new and better drugs with fewer complications to treat patients.

Another important area of ongoing research is the development of innovative prevention strategies. Inventing a safe and effective microbiocide is one important area of research, as scientists strive to give women a method of protecting themselves from infection during intercourse.

A transcript of President Bush's remarks following his December 1 meeting is available on the White House Web site. The full text of Rice's statement is available on the State Department Web site. The full text of the NIH statement is available on the agency's Web site.

A transcript of Gupta's webchat and information about upcoming webchats are available on webchat station.

For ongoing coverage of the disease and efforts to combat it, see HIV/AIDS.

(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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