By Itzel Zuniga Jul 29, 2008, 5:08 GMT
Mexico City - The scientist who will serve as co-president of the XVII International AIDS Conference from August 3 to 8 in Mexico City says it is high time the biennial conference comes to the region - and emphasizes the importance of the theme, 'Universal Action Now.'
'The last word is important, because we all have to act together and we have to act now,' Luis E Soto-Ramirez told Deutsche Presse- Agentur dpa.
Soto-Ramirez, head of molecular virology at the department of infectious diseases in Mexico's National Institute of Medical Science, stressed the need to get priorities right in the fight against AIDS, and noted that 'the world has wasted a lot of time.'
'We do not have a vaccine, we do not have a cure. But with the weapons we have today we can do a global campaign for prevention first and treatment second. That is something the world is unfortunately looking at the wrong way around, and that is a serious mistake,' Soto-Ramirez said.
Scientists have tried new things and learned from mistakes, he said, but he admitted there is 'stagnation' and that the current vaccine research is based on the wrong ideas.
His comments echoed the recent decisions by Merck pharmaceuticals and the US publicly-funded AIDS research institute to suspend further testing of two unconventional vaccines which aimed to reduce the HIV count in people who became infected. Those vaccines emerged after decades of frustration in the search for a traditional vaccine to induce antibodies against the virus.
'If you inject HIV in millions of people, they are going to 'misbehave,' to have irresponsible sex, because they feel protected. This is going to lead to re-combinations of the virus, and (the vaccine) stops working,' Soto-Ramirez told dpa.
The conference co-chair called for an equilibrium between private and public initiatives, so that they would continue to fund crucial vaccine research.
'In apocalyptic scenarios, if you create an effective vaccine you are going to sell it to Europe, the United States and Canada. And what about everyone else? The creators are going to end up giving the patent to the World Health Organization for free, because African governments will not be able to buy it for all their inhabitants. So it is not a (private) business, it is a business for humanity.'
The United Nations says the numbers of AIDS deaths and infections have declined in the last decade, but new infections worldwide have far outpaced efforts to provide anti-retroviral treatment to patients.
UN health programmes provided anti-retroviral treatment to an additional 1 million people in 2007, but in the same year a total of 2.5 million people became infected with the AIDS virus.
Africa still has the lion's share of the world's 33.2 million HIV/AIDS cases, and 'the data that are issuing from India and China really are shocking,' Soto-Ramirez noted.
But he is critical of the fact that it has taken so long for the conference to come to Latin America, which he says is 'half way' compared with the rest of the world.
'We are not Africa, with virtually no access to treatment and so many cases. But we are also not the developed country which has open access to medication, with no cost impacts,' he said.
'We are in an intermediate part with very particular problems. Migration and AIDS and HIV is one of them.'
'Given that so many in Latin America and the Caribbean have died from HIV/AIDS and have fought this disease with the same enthusiasm and passion as in any part of Africa and Asia, there seems no justification for this lack of attention,' he wrote in a recent editorial in Science magazine.
Latin America's AIDS epidemic varies by country and population - a reflection of the cultural, ethnic and geographic diversity of Latin America and the Caribbean.
The largest number of HIV cases are through sexual transmission, generally among the most vulnerable populations, such as prostitutes in Honduras, Suriname, Guyana, Guatemala and El Salvador.
Men who have sex with men represent a quarter of the new infections in Latin America and half of the new cases in Brazil, while the Caribbean countries have a mainly heterosexual epidemic partly due to the demand for sexual tourism, according to the non- profit Kaiser Family Foundation.
The Caribbean is the second-most affected region in the world after Africa, with an HIV prevalence of 1 per cent of the population. That same rate prevails in smaller countries in the region such as Honduras, Panama, El Salvador and Guatemala.
The region as a whole grapples with complex issues related to poverty, migration, absence of leadership in some countries, homophobia, gender-based violence, little research on HIV transmission patterns and the resistance to promote condoms.
Since HIV is largely sexually transmitted, condoms are 'the only functioning method' of prevention, Soto-Ramirez said.
'Therein lies the first factor that blocks all efforts - the individuality of each person's sexuality. Everyone exercises sexuality in a different way. Sex is instinctive, and it sometimes pulls us away from logical reasoning,' he said.
'To this, you have to add other aspects that surround sexuality, like moral aspects, religion, social stigmatization. Homosexuality remains very stigmatized still.'
He saw a 'greater danger' in what he termed 'non-permissive societies,' among which he singled out the Muslim world, because they provide 'fewer chances for protection.'
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