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
"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.
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