World Bank to tackle HIV/AIDS

Russia received an approval for a long delayed loan from the World Bank to tackle HIV/AIDS and TB. For its part, the Russian Government promised to match the loan with $134 million in new money over 5 years for HIV/AIDS and TB. This contribution from the government signalled growing recognition that both HIV/AIDS and TB epidemics represented a threatening crisis for Russia's development.¹⁵

The antiretroviral Fuzeon (T-20)

The first of a new type of anti-HIV drug gained approval in the USA. Unlike all previously approved drugs, Fuzeon (also known as enfuvirtide or T-20) was designed to prevent the entry of HIV into human cells. The drug was not available as a pill and had to be injected. It could be used as part of combination treatment only by patients who had already become resistant to other antiretroviral drugs.¹⁶

In April the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced a new initiative called Advancing HIV Prevention (AHP), designed to reduce the number of new HIV infections in the US. For two decades before AHP, the CDC mainly targeted its prevention efforts at persons at risk of becoming infected with HIV. In contrast, the new initiative would focus mainly on people already infected with the virus. AHP proposed making HIV testing a routine part of medical care and putting more resources into partner tracing. The recently-licensed rapid HIV test would play a key role in the new initiative.¹⁷

The US Senate approved President Bush's international AIDS bill in May, setting a timetable for spending $15 billion over five years.¹⁸

A team of Belgian researchers reported on the probable origins of HIV-2. They concluded that the virus had probably transferred from sooty mangabeys to humans in Guinea Bissau during the 1940s.¹⁹

South Korean Lee Jong-wook took office as the new Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and named HIV/AIDS as his top priority in his first speech.²⁰

Meanwhile concerns were mounting over the Global Fund's sustainability as it faced a serious funding shortfall.²¹

New HIV/AIDS figures were released in India in July, and it was estimated that between 3.82 and 4.58 million Indians were HIV positive.²²

In September the WHO declared that the failure to deliver treatment to nearly six million people with HIV/AIDS in developing countries was a global public health emergency. Only about 300,000 people in developing countries received the drugs at all, and in sub-Saharan Africa, where 4.1 million people were infected, just over 1% or about 50,000 people had access to antiretroviral treatment.²³

Vatican cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo stated that condoms were not safe and did not protect against the transmission of HIV.

"I simply wished to remind the public, seconding the opinion of a good number of experts, that when the condom is employed as a contraceptive, it is not totally dependable, and that the cases of pregnancy are not rare. In the case of the AIDS virus, which is around 450 times smaller than the sperm cell, the condom's latex material obviously gives much less security."Cardinal Trujillo -²⁴