Aids 2012: Turning the Tide

Everywhere you look in Washington there is a poster announcing Aids 2012, along with public health advertisements on taking an HIV test and using a condom (the most popular one proclaiming that it doesn’t matter how big you might be, there will be a condom to fit).

The city is patently proud to be hosting this 19th International Aids conference. And the event is swamped with optimism. It is even in the title: Turning the Tide Together.

And setting the scene was the significant announcement of the roadmap for cure.

Led by the deeply impressive Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, the co-discoverer of HIV and a Nobel Prize winner, leading scientists attending the conference are putting together a blueprint for how to work towards a cure both in terms of the science itself and the funding.

The discussion is not necessarily of ‘total cure’ but a functional cure. That means finding a way that people can live still with the virus but no longer have to take anti-retrovirals drugs.

But there is also real concern here, too, that all this optimism does not address the core issue of funding.

The economic climate is causing huge difficulties with governments more reluctant to meet their previous commitments. The Global Fund for Aids only runs up until 2014 and nobody seems to know what is going to happen then.

There is also a growing realisation with this reducing pot, now is the time to look at how wisely the money has been spent. Some will admit that there has been a lot of waste and that this has to stop if they are able to ‘Turn the Tide’.

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