Money Must Be Spent Wisely in Fight Against HIV/AIDS, Report Says

"More money, less waste and smarter programmes are urgently needed to consolidate precious gains in the war on AIDS and HIV, UNAIDS said" in a report released on Thursday ahead of the disease's 30th anniversary and the beginning of the U.N. High Level Meeting on AIDS, Agence France-Presse reports.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wrote in the report's foreward, "The number of people becoming infected and dying is decreasing, but the international resources needed to sustain this progress have declined for the first time in 10 years, despite tremendous unmet needs. We have a long way to go to prevent new HIV infections, end discrimination and scale up treatment, care and support" (6/2).

The Economist writes that though the "armory" to fight HIV/AIDS "is getting fuller. ... war costs money, and money is in short supply at the moment" (6/2).

Reuters reports that "global leaders may now need to shift their focus to spending more on drugs used to treat the disease as new data show this is also the best way to prevent the virus from spreading" (Steenhuysen/Lewis/Gershberg, 6/3).

New Strategic Investment Framework for AIDS

In related news, Bernhard Schwartlander and colleagues, on behalf of the Investment Framework Study Group, "propose a strategic investment framework that is intended to support better management of national and international HIV/AIDS responses than exists with the present system" in this Lancet article. According to the authors, the new framework "would avert 12.2 million new HIV infections and 7.4 million deaths from AIDS between 2011 and 2020 compared with continuation of present approaches, and result in 29.4 million life-years gained" (6/3).

Back to other news for June 2011