Sydney, 24 July 2007
Research on novel prevention and treatment strategies, and the cutting-edge use of gene therapy to treat HIV disease was presented at today's plenary session at the 4th IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention in Sydney, Australia. Other session topics included female-initiated prevention technologies, provider-initiated HIV testing and the prevention of mother-to-child transmission. A special session explored the future of global financing of HIV prevention, care and treatment.
"While resources for AIDS programming have grown substantially over the past five years, far greater commitments are required," said IAS President Dr. Pedro Cahn, International Conference Co-Chair and Director of Fundación Huesped in Argentina. "To achieve and sustain universal access to HIV prevention, treatment and care, all donors and governments in resource-limited countries must rise to the challenge of strengthening health systems throughout the world."
Regarding the availability of new treatment strategies, Prof. David Cooper, IAS 2007 Local Co-chair and Director of the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research at University of New South Wales said: "It's an extremely exciting time in terms of drug development. We have better drugs in existing classes, as well as whole new classes of drugs. Patients and their clinicians now have a much wider choice of drug combinations than ever before."
Male Circumcision: From Research to Practice
Over 45 observational studies, three clinical trials and several biological studies all provide compelling evidence that male circumcision reduces HIV transmission from women to men by about 60 percent, according to the lead speaker on Tuesday's plenary panel, Professor Robert Bailey. Bailey is Professor of Epidemiology at the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Research Associate at the Field Museum in Chicago. Since 1995, he has devoted most of his research activities to the issue of male circumcision as a possible HIV prevention strategy. He has conducted circumcision-related studies in varying communities in Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, as well as in the US.
According to Bailey, male circumcision may be the oldest surgical procedure, dating back to at least 2300 BC in Egypt. Today, about 30% of men in the world are circumcised, and about 67% of men in Africa are circumcised. In his remarks, Bailey described modelling estimates that show that millions of new HIV infections could be averted in sub-Saharan Africa if substantial proportions of men were circumcised. In the highest prevalence areas, the impact of circumcision would be greatest, and the intervention would be highly cost-effective.
More on IAS later today.
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