New tools can significantly reduce HIV/AIDS worldwide

Jul 6 2011

"We are entering a new era in HIV prevention. PEPFAR promoted a 'combination prevention' strategy from the beginning. But the tools were limited. Scientific advances could give individuals the ability to determine the prevention intervention that works best for them. Preliminary mathematical models suggest that combining a full range of prevention interventions is additive - and could drive the epidemic down to a manageable level so that when a vaccine is available, it could mop up what remains," former U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Ambassador Mark Dybul writes in a Huffington Post opinion piece.

"Achieving that vision will not be easy. It requires resources at a time when money is scarce. But few programs domestic or international can draw a straight line from dollars invested to lives saved," Dybul, a scholar at the O'Neill Institute of Global and National Health Law at Georgetown University, notes. "Implementing programs will be difficult. But the problems are not remarkably different than those the skeptics claimed made treatment impossible."

"If we seize the opportunity science has provided, history could be made again and the HIV epidemic could be driven into the ground," Dybul urges (7/3).