In the United States a doctor who injected his former lover with HIV

1999 History

In the United States a doctor who injected his former lover with HIV infected blood was sentenced to 50 years in prison.²²

A group of researchers at the University of Alabama claimed to have discovered that a particular type of chimpanzee, once common in West Central Africa, was the source of HIV. The researchers suggested that HIV-1 was introduced into the human population when hunters became exposed to infected blood.²³

Reports started to emerge from South Africa of rape cases involving young girls. It was suggested that a popular myth that sex with a virgin could cure AIDS was the root cause of this increase in child rapes.²⁴ Later on in the year, the South African President Thabo Mbeki claimed that the anti-HIV drug AZT was toxic and could be a danger to health.²⁵

According to the annual World Health Report, AIDS had become the fourth biggest killer worldwide, only twenty years after the epidemic began.²⁶

The Ugandan ministry of Health started a voluntary door-to-door HIV screening programme using rapid tests in an effort to reduce the spread of HIV. This effort was intended to make HIV screening services accessible to more people, especially in rural areas where there were neither modern laboratories nor electricity to run standard HIV tests.²⁷ Since 1986 the Ugandan government had implemented a number of successful initiatives, and whereas in 1992 it was estimated that 30% of adults in Kampala were living with HIV, by 1999 the figure had fallen to 12%.²⁸ However, HIV/AIDS was still a considerable health problem in Uganda. It was estimated that 820,000 adults and children were living with HIV/AIDS as at the end of 1999.²⁹

In the UK a judge ordered that a five-month-old baby girl should be tested for HIV against her parents' wishes. The baby's parents refused to have their daughter tested, contending that she was perfectly healthy and that they should have the right to decide what was best for her.

"This case is not about the rights of the parents, and if, as the father has suggested, he regards the rights of a tiny baby to be subsumed within the rights of the parents, he is wrong, the judge said."³⁰

South Africa won the first round in its battle with the United States and multinational pharmaceutical companies to force a cut in drugs prices. The dispute concentrated on South African legislation that enabled local companies to manufacture HIV/AIDS drugs that could be sold at a fraction of the price of similar imported products. The US argued that the South African laws undermined the patent rights of drug manufacturers.³¹

Initial findings from a joint Uganda-US study identified a new drug regimen, a single oral dose of the antiretroviral drug nevirapine, as being both affordable and effective in reducing mother to baby transmission of HIV. This research provided real hope that mother to child transmission could be effectively reduced in developing countries.³²

"This extraordinary finding is the most recent in our efforts to bring an end to AIDS, not only in the United States but in countries around the world."Donna E. Karala, the Health and Human Services Secretary

The UK Government announced that all pregnant women in Britain would be offered an HIV test in an attempt to reduce the number of babies infected with HIV. The Labour Government set a target of reducing the number of infant infections by 80% by 2002.³³

Health officials rejected attempts to reopen the bath houses in San Francisco, which were closed 15 years previously at the height of the epidemic in 1984.³⁴ A survey published in August found that growing numbers of gay men in San Francisco were having unprotected sex.³⁵ The survey results provoked concern and disappointment among public health authorities because, instead of declining, the rate of new HIV infections had remained at about 500 per year.³⁶

Needle sharing among injecting drug users set off an explosive increase in HIV infections in Russia. In Moscow, three times as many cases were reported in the first nine months of 1999 as in all previous years combined.³⁷

Drug use in Russia

"Russia is broke, and AIDS prevention programs are taking a back seat to problems that appear more pressing, such as mass poverty, crime and Russia's huge foreign debts."³⁸

In November, China broadcast its first ever television advertisement for condoms in an effort to stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS.³⁹ Shortly after the advertisement was seen by hundreds of millions of people, it was banned by the State Administration of Industry and Commerce.⁴⁰

'The River', a book by Edward Hooper, was published. There was a lot of debate about the role of polio vaccines in the origin of the AIDS epidemic.⁴¹

T-20, a member of a new class of AIDS drugs called fusion inhibitors, went into clinical trials.⁴²

The Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi declared AIDS a national disaster and ordered a National AIDS Control Council to be set up immediately.

"AIDS is not just a serious threat to our social and economic development, it is a real threat to our very existence, and every effort must be made to bring the problem under control."President Moi⁴³

However the president also said that his government and Kenya's churches would not advocate the use of condoms as a method of prevention because this would encourage young people to have sex.

A research study published in November argued that male circumcision could help to reduce HIV infection rates in Africa and Asia.⁴⁴

At the request of countries around the world eager to reach the age group at highest risk, the 1999 World AIDS Day campaign, "Listen, Learn and Live!", continued to focus on people under 25.⁴⁵

By the end of 1999, UNAIDS estimated that 33 million people around the world were living with HIV/AIDS and that 2.6 million people worldwide had died of the disease in 1999, more than in any other year since the epidemic began.⁴⁶ It was also reported that for the first time more women than men were infected with HIV in Africa