Following in his mother, Princess Diana’s footsteps, Prince Harry says the people who have been leading the fight against HIV and Aids are getting old and the youth needs to ready itself to take the baton.
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Doctors Without Borders’ HIV policy adviser says the global aid group has “zero tolerance” for inaction on fighting the virus in Central and West Africa. More than 37,000 adults were infected with HIV, including 7,500 young women.
A new HIV vaccine will undergo a larger clinical trial in South Africa after a small study in the country showed promising results previous year.
But it’s not just bad news for South Africa.
It is time for us to step up to make sure that girls and boys with HIV aren’t kept from playing with their friends, classmates and neighbours.
Researchers did find the increases in age-standardized rates of new infections between 2005 and 2015 in 74 countries, including Egypt, Pakistan, Kenya, the Philippines, Cambodia, Mexico, and Russian Federation, something that threatens to undermine past progress in combating infections. The International AIDS Conference is the largest conference on any global health issue and was first convened in 1985 as a forum to bring together policy makers, community leaders, scientists, and health experts.
The new study is based on findings coordinated by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, which includes more than 1,700 collaborators in 124 countries, according to a statement from the institute.
Haidong Wang answers questions about his study.
In 2014 nearly 85,500 people were undergoing HIV treatment and care, more than double the number (41,157) in 2004, and a 5 per cent increase on 2013.
Professor Peter Piot, Director at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said, “The continuing high rate of over 2 million new HIV infections represents a collective failure which must be addressed through prevention efforts and continued investment in HIV vaccine research”.
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She said Doctors Without Borders has no tolerance for “essentially what will be bold-faced lies” to meet the goal of getting 30 million people on HIV treatment by 2020 if more funding and political will isn’t applied. “Data from these systems are not systematically used by UNAIDS”. Half of all children who acquire HIV perinatally die by their second birthday unless they receive antiretroviral therapy, with peak mortality occurring at 6 to 8 weeks of life.
