WASHINGTON – Thirty-one years after doctors saw their first cases of AIDS, scientists say they now have the knowledge to begin to end the epidemic.
The only questions, says AIDS researcher Diane Havlir, are "Do we have the will to do it?" and "Who is going to pay for it?"
Doctors can now prescribe drug cocktails that reduce the amount of AIDS virus in a patients' body to undetectable levels. Landmark research funded by the National Institutes of Health show that these patients are not only healthier, but virtually non-contagious.
Outside the controlled environment of the lab, however, fighting HIV is far more complicated.
Only about one in four Americans with HIV have their virus this well controlled, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The rest either aren't getting care, aren't getting consistent care, or don't know they're infected.
"It's very easy to treat HIV, the virus itself," says Jeff Lennox, chief of infectious diseases at Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital and a professor at the Emory School of Medicine. "It's very hard to get treatment to people with HIV."
More than 25,000 AIDS researchers, patients and activists will converge on Washington, D.C., next week for AIDS 2012, an international conference being held in the USA for the first time in 22 years. While the meeting's location in the nation's capital will highlight the USA's scientific achievements and generosity in fighting AIDS around the world, the conference will also shine a spotlight on the country's uneven progress in treating the disease at home, activists say.
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