Ending AIDS Pricetag Starts at $6 Billion as Donors Pull Back amid Slump

Treating all developing-world HIV patients who meet the current World Health Organization (WHO) standard for antiretroviral therapy initiation would cost an additional $6 billion a year, the agency estimates. Expanding treatment to include everyone infected with HIV would costs tens of billions more.

Even as he maintains that “we may well be able to overcome AIDS,” Michel Kazatchkine, director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, admitted that “the gap between what the science is telling us we can achieve and what we would be able to achieve is at risk of increasing.”

For instance, the UN says global funding to fight AIDS in developing nations in 2010 dropped 10 percent from 2009 levels, to $6.9 billion, following the financial meltdown.

In South Africa, the National AIDS Council’s first priority is expanding treatment within the next five years to include patients with CD4 cell counts below 350, the point at which WHO recommends treatment initiation.

Globally, Kazatchkine said his priority is extending treatment to the 9 million people needing it just to survive. “I cannot prioritize treatment for a patient with 800 CD4 cells when there’s still a line of patients with less than 200,” Kazatchkine said.

More than 60 percent of people with HIV worldwide are not aware they are infected, according to UNAIDS, and most developing-world patients’ CD4 counts at diagnosis are well below 350 cells.

“They’ve already done most of the transmission they’re going to do by the time you see them in the clinic,” said Tim Hallett, a researcher at Imperial College London who works with mathematical models of HIV.

Studies show earlier treatment can reduce heterosexually transmitted HIV by 96 percent, while giving antiretrovirals to high-risk HIV-negative people can lower their infection risk by up to 73 percent. To test pre-exposure prophylaxis, CDC is planning trials that will enroll 300 men who have sex with men in each of four US locations. However, this project is not yet funded, said Elizabeth-Ann Chandler, a CDC spokesperson.

The Friends of AIDS Foundation is dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for HIV positive individuals and empowering people to make healthy choices to prevent the spread of the HIV virus. To learn more about The Friends of AIDS Foundation, please visit: http://www.friendsofaids.org.

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