The seventeenth International AIDS

The seventeenth International AIDSConference took place in Mexico City in August. For the first time in the history of the Conference, 2008 saw the use of ‘conference hubs’: a network of locations around the world where conference sessions were screened and accompanied by moderated discussion. The ‘hubs’ were considered very successful in widening the reach of the conference. ³⁶

In the same month, UNAIDS published its 2008 report on the global AIDS epidemic. The report warned that with 2010 only two years away, the target of universal access by 2010 would be unattainable unless the global response to HIV was substantially strengthened and accelerated. However it also emphasised that signs of major progress in the HIV response were being seen for the first time in 2008.

“The 2008 Report on the global AIDS epidemic confirms that the world is, at last, making some real progress in its response to AIDS.”Peter Piot, Executive Director of UNAIDS

Describing a "stabilization of the global epidemic", the report estimated that by the end of 2007 there were 33 million people living with HIV worldwide (down from the 39.5 million estimate made at the end of 2006). Although much of the reduction was attributed to better surveillance techniques in many countries, it also reflected the drop in HIV prevalence in certain areas, including sub-Saharan Africa. The report estimated that the annual number of AIDS deaths had declined from 2.2 million in 2005 to 2 million in 2007, reflecting an increase in the number of people receiving antiretroviral drugs. ³⁷

Dr. Robert Gallo

In September, the resignation of president Thabo Mbeki was welcomed as a potential turning point in the controversial history of HIV and AIDS in South Africa. A Harvard study published shortly after asserted that more than 330,000 lives were lost between 2000 and 2005 as a direct result of the South African government’s failures in the provision of antiretroviral drugs.³⁸ The decision of interim president Kgalema Motlanthe to immediately appoint a new health minister, Barbara Hogan, was celebrated by AIDS activists as a sign of a new commitment to the AIDS response.^{39 40}

An old controversy was revived in October with the announcement of the winners of the Nobel Prize for medicine. The prize was split between Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier of the Pasteur Institute in Paris for their discovery of HIV, and a third scientist for his work on a separate disease. The decision not to credit American researcher Robert Gallo for his contribution to early work on AIDS resurrected a bitter dispute over who claimed rights to the discovery. In awarding the prize, the chair of the Nobel committee, Professor Bertil Fredholm, stated:

"I think it is really well established that the initial discovery of the virus was in the Institute Pasteur."