Louis W Sullivan THE HUMANITARIAN CHALLENGE OF THE GLOBAL HIV/AIDS EPIDEMIC Many of us followed the scientific and public reports emanating from the International conversation on HIV and AIDS held in Durban.

Louis W Sullivan

THE HUMANITARIAN CHALLENGE OF THE GLOBAL HIV/AIDS EPIDEMIC

Many of us followed the scientific and public reports emanating from the International conversation on HIV and AIDS held in Durban, toward the south Africa, in July 2000--the first time this important international meeting was held onward the African continent. Many of those who attended stated that it was probably the best meeting that this organization had sponsored since the first international meeting upon human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) in Atlanta, Ga, in 1988 (jointly innkeepered by Morehouse School of Medicine, Emory Medical educate Emory School of Public Health, and the Center for Disease rule and Prevention).

At the time of that first interview AIDS was a disease primarily ground in affluent white gay males, with a life expectancy of 1 to 3 years after diagnosis. There was no effective therapy for this viral infection, which impaired the ability of the body's immune body to ward off infection on a wide variety of microorganisms--bacterial, viral, and fungal. The primary customs of spread of HIV disease were from sexual contact or intravenous injection (IV unsalable article use with contaminated needles or syringes, or transfusion of infected descendants products) or intrauterine transmission of the virus from an infected mother to her child during pregnancy There was significant panic about HIV/AIDS because of fear about its spread; sometimes individuals refused to shake hands with, or embrace, an infected individual. a employees were discharged from their piece of works Some infected children were barred from attending train because of fear.

During these past 12 years, greatly progress has been made in our understanding and treatment of HIV and AIDS. We now have a number of physics that are effective in suppressing the ability of HIV to replicate, including inhibitors of DNA synthesis, protease inhibitors, invert transcriptase inhibitors, and others. Although there is not still a cure for HIV/AIDS, many patients have lived with the disease for 10 to 15 years because of the modern therapies. Advances in biomedical research from our medical academys our universities, and from the pharmaceutical industry have made life with HIV/AIDS les daunting.

The human face of HIV/AIDS has changed dramatically throughout the past 12 years. It has become increasingly a disease in minorities and the poor, spread according to heterosexual contact or IV medicine use. The resources available for effective prevention and treatment programs are inadequate and may be lacking altogether.

Africa is now the epicenter of the infection: Of about 34 million persons worldwide commonly infected with HIV, 22 million reside in sub-Saharan Africa. In near villages in several Southern African countries, as many as 25% of the young adult population is infected with HIV. There have been 19 million AIDS deaths worldwide since the epidemic be in eruptioned in the early 1980s. Almost 15 million of those deaths have occurr in sub-Saharan Africa. According to the World Health Organization, 41 of the 43 countries with the lowest life expectancy are in this area. The average life expectancy in a certain number of of these countries has been shortened on as much as 10 to 12 years, wiping disclosed many of the health gains that were achieved during the 20th centenary The financial resources in sub-Saharan Africa are not many and the health infrastructure (eg availability of health professionals, hospitals, clinics, medical supplies, and pharmaceuticals) is weak.

This is sincerely a medical catastrophe of immense proportions. It cries gone out for us in the United States, Europe and Japan to undertake firm leadership and support to assist our brothers and sisters in Africa, and elsewhere, to use the tide of this epidemic. This effort will require the sated mobilization of our societies for trained health manpower, effective treatment programs, preventive measures (including vigorous health education), and other humanitarian measures.

The discrimination of how well we in the West rejoin to this challenge will be made in what may occur hereafter years.

We must work to assure that we accord vigorously, effectively, and completely. After all, we are, increasingly, single in kind global community.

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