Though today marks the 25th anniversary of World AIDS day, ABC's This Week was the only Sunday morning national public affairs program that devoted a few minutes to the virus that currently infects 34 million people around the globe, and has killed approximately 35 million people since it was first discovered in the early 1980's.
Speaking about how antiretroviral drugs are now significantly more accessible to people in places like Africa than when they first came on the market in the mid 1990's, the U2 frontman said:
[jump]“They used to cost a fortune, you know, ten grand a year. It’s down to 40 cents a day for one pill. I remember being in Malawi, in Lilongwe, where there was four to a bed, queuing up to be diagnosed. But the diagnosis was a death sentence because there was no treatment. They had the medication. But they couldn’t give it to them. They couldn’t afford it.”
How important are antiretroviral drugs? According to a 2011 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the chances of an HIV-infected person transmitting the virus to an uninfected person decreases by 96 percent when on such medication.
Although there isn't much comity in Congress these days, one bill that made it through both houses this fall was the reauthorizing of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, better known as PEPFAR. That legislation was originally passed in 2003 and reauthorized in 2008. There was no specific money set aside for this year's bill, but in next year's budget requests, the Obama Administration, the House and the Senate have requested $6 billion for global HIV/AIDS assistance, including $4 billion for PEPFAR.
In Washington D.C. on Tuesday the U.S. is hosting the Fourth Replenishment conference for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which is the main global funder for global health. Earlier this year both the House and Senate agreed to fund $1.65 billion in the FY 2014 State and Foreign Operations appropriations bills.
On This Week, Bono praised Congress for coming together on such a hugely important topic.
“Even though originally Republicans historically supported PEPFAR, and Democrats The Global Fund, that has changed,” Bono said. “This is incredible. This is what happens when people put their ego and political point-scoring away for a bigger purpose and they stop playing politics with the poor.”
Meanwhile United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said today that “On this World AIDS Day, I am more optimistic than ever. Much of the world is accelerating progress in responding to HIV..This is crucial to halting and reversing the AIDS epidemic for good,” he added.
UNAIDS reports that globally the number of new HIV infections continues to fall, with the 2.3 million new such infections in 2012 the lowest number of annual new inspections since the mid-to-late 1990's. They also report that the number of HIV infections declined by more than 50 percent in 26 countries between 2001 and 2012.