History of AIDS

2007 History

A large-scale international microbicide study was halted in January after preliminary results found that the product was not achieving its aims of preventing HIV infection in women. In fact, trials of the drug in some sites found that there was a higher infection rate amongst women who used the cellulose sulphate vaginal gel, compared to the placebo group.¹ UNAIDS regarded the news as “a disappointing and unexpected setback” as “[t]he need to continue research to find a user-controlled means of preventing HIV infection in women is urgent.”²

President Jammeh of The Gambia claimed he could cure AIDS

Also in January came the dramatic announcement by President Jammeh of The Gambia that he had found a cure for AIDS.

“I can treat asthma and HIV/AIDS and the cure is a day’s treatment. Within three days the person should be tested again and I can tell you that he/she will be negative...”³

Jammeh’s claim was soon revealed to be unfounded. A scientist who conducted the tests rebutted the study’s findings, saying that none of the trial patients “could be described as cured.”⁴ Despite the negative outcomes of the trial, the president continued in his belief of his treatment plan, which was also endorsed by the Gambian health ministry and administered in state hospitals. The President of the International AIDS Society Dr. Pedro Cahn called the Gambian president’s claims “shocking and irresponsible”⁵ , not only for providing false hope, but also for risking people’s lives by taking them off potent combination antiretroviral therapy.
Good news came to South Africa in March when the government finally developed an ambitious and comprehensive plan to try and tackle the epidemic after years of inaction. Headed up by the deputy president, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, and the deputy health minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, the plan aimed to try and reduce the number of new infections by fifty percent, and bring treatment care and support to at least eighty percent of all HIV-positive people and their families.⁶ The new plan was welcomed by national and international health experts, although it was made clear that in order for the new goals to be realised there needed to be a fast track restructuring of the health care system.
Also that month came the first publication by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) regarding recommendations on circumcision and HIV. The guidance came three months after trials in Uganda and Kenya provided conclusive evidence that circumcision reduces the risk of transmission from women to men by around 50-60%. The publication stressed that men should be taught that circumcision provides only partial protection against HIV, to prevent them developing a false sense of security, and should only be provided as part of a comprehensive HIV prevention package. It also stressed that well-trained practitioners working in sanitary conditions should perform the procedure only after obtaining informed consent.⁷
In April, it was revealed by the WHO that at the end of 2006 two million HIV-positive people in low- and middle-income countries were accessing antiretroviral treatment. This means that around 28% of those in need of the life-saving drugs were receiving them. The speed of expansion remained too slow to meet the global AIDS treatment targets agreed by the G8 summit.⁸
By June the G8 had revised its universal treatment pledge to give every person in need of HIV treatment access by 2010. Instead, it proposed a new weaker target stating that the G8 would, “over the next few years” aim to ensure access for “approximately five million people”.⁹ The weakening of the original G8 pledge caused anger, as it was felt that a commitment had been broken which had been at the very heart of the fight against AIDS for the past two years.¹⁰ Although it was acknowledged that universal treatment by 2010 was more idealistic than feasible, many people believed that having such a demanding target put pressure on country governments to get as many people as possible into treatment programmes and highlighted the scale and urgency of the task.
In July, it was revealed that new methods of sampling led to a massive reduction in the estimated number of people living with HIV in India. Previous estimates had suggested that there were around 5.7 million people living with HIV in India, giving it the largest HIV caseload in the world. The new figures suggested that the actual total was somewhere between 2 and 3.1 million people - around 60% lower than the original estimate - and placed India third after South Africa and Nigeria for countries with the highest HIV infected populations. The previously inflated HIV numbers for India were due to figures being obtained in areas of particularly high HIV prevalence and taken from samples from surveillance sites visited mainly by pregnant women, injecting drug users and prostitutes.¹¹
“Today we have a far more reliable estimate of the burden of HIV in India,” said the Indian Health Minister, Anbumani Ramadoss. He did however warn of complacency, as “in terms of human lives affected, the numbers are still large, in fact very large.”¹²
Later in July, there were reports of counterfeit antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) flooding the market in Zimbabwe, potentially putting many lives at risk. The adverse economic and political conditions in Zimbabwe meant that supplies of government-funded ARVs dried up in many parts of the country, leaving those with HIV at serious risk of developing AIDS. This left the door open for dealers to sell fake or illegally obtained pills to HIV positive people desperate to maintain their health. A spokesperson for the Medicines Control Authority of Zimbabwe (MCAZ) said “Such medicines may be counterfeited, adulterated and contaminated, thus rendering them ineffective and sometimes dangerous