The end of the end of AIDS
he World Bank / Blog - "The recent Durban 2016 International AIDS Conference celebrates the success of AIDS treatment in reducing illness and death. The pall of despair and wasting death that hung over the Durban 2000 International AIDS Conference has truly been lifted. In KwaZulu-Natal, where the conference was held, AIDS treatment has increased community life expectancy by a full 11 years, reversing decades of decline -- life expectancy in KwaZulu-Natal is higher today than before the HIV epidemic. This is indubitably one of the great successes of global health. (Blog by David Wilson)
However, the horizon is darkening, as the gathering storm grows starker. Unless we balance our celebration of the success of AIDS treatment with a sober appraisal of and rejoinder to these threats, we risk a reversal of painstaking gains. (...)
The 2016 conference also underscores the limitations of treatment-as-prevention (TASP - treating all for the public health benefit of reducing further transmission) as a real world magic bullet to end this epidemic. In a cluster randomized trial in KwaZulu-Natal, TAsP did not reduce new HIV infections. (...) Without decrying the transformative effects of treatment in reducing AIDS illness and death and slowing HIV transmission, we won't end this epidemic with tablets. We have never ended a global epidemic without a cure or vaccine and HIV is no exception.
What must we do better to navigate the gale winds before us?"