Modest Anti-AIDS Efforts Offer Huge Payoff, Studies Say

There is overwhelming evidence that simple, relatively inexpensive steps can greatly reduce HIV transmission, according to two new reports. However, they warn that if the prevention measures are not adopted, about 46 million people -- mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, China and India -- would become infected by 2010.

One report, whose authors include the UN, the World Health Organization and the US Census Bureau was published in Saturday's Lancet (2002;360:73-77). Its researchers analyzed 86 published reports on prevention programs around the world and trends in new HIV infections in 126 countries. The second report, sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, is a blueprint for reducing infections worldwide.

A key to successful prevention efforts is to increase the economic, legal, political and social empowerment of women to reduce their vulnerability to HIV, the blueprint said. Additional measures include drugs and other steps to prevent transmission from mother to child; education programs in the workplace and in schools and elsewhere for dropouts; treatment of STDs; peer counseling for prostitutes and men who have sex with men; and programs making clean needles available to injecting drug users.

Applying the measures would prevent a varying percentage of infections, ranging from a low of 40 percent in countries with stable or declining prevalences (like Senegal and Thailand) to a high of 70 percent in countries with rapidly growing epidemics (like Cameroon and China).

The reports emphasized that conquering AIDS requires combining prevention with treatment. The costs of a sustained, aggressive program would be $10 billion a year, or $1,000 for each infection prevented -- much less, prevention advocates say, than the cost of treating people once they become ill.

Back to other CDC news for July 9, 2002

Previous Updates