The new Joint United Nations Programme on AIDS (UNAIDS), bringing together six agencies belonging to or affiliated with the UN system (WHO, UNDP, UNICEF, UNFPA, UNESCO and the World Bank), became operational on January 1st.80
In February the heavyweight boxer Tommy Morrison was identified as HIV positive after being tested prior to a fight.81
"'I thought AIDS was something that happened to gays and drug addicts. A macho guy like me who loves ladies and is superfit - he doesn't get AIDS.'These words were spoken not in 1986 but in 1996 by Tommy Morrison."82
In March, a government appointed panel issued a report sharply criticising the US government's domestic response to AIDS:
"The Government's $1.4 billion AIDS research program is uncoordinated, lacks focus and needs a major overhaul to attract new scientific talent and spur novel and imaginative ideas."83
Meanwhile the effect of AIDS was continuing to be felt at a community level. In the USA there had been a cumulative total of 81,500 AIDS cases in New York, and:
"despite two world wars, the Depression and epidemics, nothing in this century has affected the life expectancy for New Yorkers as greatly as AIDS."84
In May the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first 'home sampling' system of HIV testing. Until then the FDA had insisted that all tests for HIV (whether blood or oral fluid) had to be done under the supervision of health professionals. Under the new system, someone would buy a sampling kit from a shop or by mail order, collect a sample of their blood, send it to a laboratory for testing, and receive their results by phone.
"'Too many American do not know their HIV status. Knowledge is power, and power leads to prevention', said HHS Secretary Donna E. Shalala. 'The availability of a home test should empower more people to learn their HIV status and protect themselves and their loved ones.'"85
Meanwhile in China it was estimated that the actual number of AIDS cases could be as high as 100,000. Two thirds of the reported AIDS cases had occurred in the southern province of Yunnan, where the use of heroin and the sharing of dirty needles had helped the spread of HIV.86
In June the FDA approved the drug Viramune (nevirapine), the first in a new class of drugs known as non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors.87 Another treatment development that took place was the introduction of the viral load test, which provided information about the risk of disease progression.88
Throughout 1996 there was excitement and optimism about the treatment of HIV infected people.89 The health of many improved enormously when they started taking combination therapy. For some people, particularly those had been ill in hospital and were then able to go home, the improvement in health was so dramatic that it was referred to as the "Lazarus Syndrome".90
At the start of the 11th International Conference on AIDS in Vancouver in July:
"the air was electric with excitement and anticipation about the findings on combination therapies to be reported during the meeting."91
Some scientists even declared that:
"aggressive treatment with multiple drugs can convert deadly AIDS into a chronic, manageable disorder like diabetes."92
One doctor suggested that giving combination therapy to patients in the first few weeks of infection might mean that the virus could be completely eliminated in two or three years.93
However, Nkosazana Zuma, the health minister of South Africa, reminded the conference delegates that:
"most people infected with HIV live in Africa, where therapies involving combinations of expensive antiviral drugs are out of the question."94
It was also reported that there were limitations on the use of the drugs, such as severe side effects and the difficulty of taking large numbers of pills each day.95
"If you think the cure is here, think again. The cure is not here. We are a long way from a cure, even for the rich who can afford the treatments."Eric Sawyer96
The government of Brazil pledged to begin providing free combination antiretroviral treatment by the end of the year. It said it would spend up to $45 million on protease inhibitors over the following twelve months.97
In October, in Washington D.C., the AIDS Memorial Quilt was displayed in its entirety for the last time, but it was also the first time that a display of the quilt had been visited by an American president.98 99
"What it has done always in the past, and will continue to do, is to put a face on this epidemic. It makes this epidemic human."Anthony Turney100
In December, the White House announced its first ever AIDS strategy. This called, amongst other things, for sustained research to find a cure and a vaccine; a reduction in new infections; guaranteed access to high quality care for AIDS patients; and fighting AIDS-related discrimination.
"None of us can afford to sit by and watch this epidemic continue to take our neighbors, friends and loved ones from us"President Clinton in a letter accompanying the AIDS plan101
AIDS advocates said that much would depend on how the stategy was implemented.
"It doesn't require rocket science to figure out what to do, what it requires is the political will to back it up."Paul Donato102
New outbreaks of HIV infection were erupting in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, India, Vietnam, Cambodia, China and elsewhere.
"The epidemic is starting to skyrocket in Russia and the Ukraine where transmission is from everything - injecting drugs, poor hygiene, and heterosexual and homosexual intercourse."Dr Peter Piot103
At the end of the year UNAIDS estimated that during 1996 some three million people, mostly under the age of 25, had become newly infected with HIV, bringing to nearly 23 million the total number of infected people. In addition an estimated 6.4 million people - 5 million adults and 1.4 million children - had already died.
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