America must continue the battle to cure AIDS

Just as the scope of public events to mark World AIDS Day has lessened significantly in recent years, so, too, has the pandemic of HIV/AIDS receded markedly from the public consciousness.

What with new anti-retroviral drugs that no longer make acquired immune deficiency syndrome an automatic death sentence for its sufferers and with public health campaigns moving on to other afflictions, many in our community and in our world may be lulled into a false sense of security that the battle against HIV/AIDS has been won.

Cold, hard data, however, clearly prove otherwise.

The World Health Organization says 37 million people continue to be infected with the human immunodeficiency virus or full-blown AIDS around the world, 18.2 million of whom are receiving life-saving treatment. In the United States, 1.2 million people are living with HIV infection, including an estimated 161,200 whose infections have not been diagnosed, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2015 annual AIDS report.

Here in the Mahoning Valley, 752 people are living with HIV or AIDS, according to the Ohio Department of Health’s AIDS Surveillance Unit’s 2015 report, and new rates of infection have plateaued here and are actually increasing in some parts of the nation.

To be sure, the war on AIDS is far from over. Yet in the shadow of Thursday’s World AIDS Day observances, hope continues to spring eternal on several fronts.

The most promising development in years emerged just this week from South Africa. The Associated Press reported that scientists there are testing a beefed-up version of a vaccine that holds promise to strike “the final nail in the coffin” of HIV/AIDS. Clinical trials of the experimental vaccine will begin with more than 5,000 participants. Full results of the trials are expected by 2020.

HOPEFUL DEVELOPMENTS

In the meantime, however, other hopeful trends emerge. For those too embarrassed by the enduring stigma of AIDS to seek public help, advances in HIV home-testing kids have been achieved that provide convenience, privacy and speedy results. As Dr. Margaret Chan, World Health Organization director-general recently put it, “HIV self-testing should open the door for many more people to know their HIV status and find out how to get treatment and access prevention services.”

In addition, the U.S. government continues to renew its commitment to fighting the plague, in part by assisting in funding the four-year vaccine trials in South Africa. The CDC also has updated its action plan on AIDS through 2020 with a focus on ensuring increased testing, comprehensive care and cutting-edge research.

That agenda continues a long and proud tradition of the past several U.S. presidential administrations. Twenty-three years ago, former President Bill Clinton made the crisis a top health priority by creating a task force to coordinate AIDS research. Then, the administration of President George W. Bush sealed a legacy of compassion by inaugurating a massive initiative to combat AIDS in Africa that has saved millions of lives. Then President Barack Obama unveiled his National HIV/AIDS Strategy aimed at ensuring maximum prevention and treatment services in the U.S. and abroad.

We therefore strongly encourage the incoming presidential administration of Donald J. Trump to continue that compassionate and humanitarian tradition. With several promising new strategies for combating the epidemic within arms’ reach, now is not the time for the U.S. to retreat from its commitment or to marginalize the virus’ wide ranks of survivors.

Locally, efforts to assist patients and spread awareness must continue unabated as well. While public funding for local and state AIDS task forces has dried up in recent years, private-sector groups have taken up the gauntlet. Prime among them have been the tireless efforts of the Ursuline Sisters HIV/AIDS Ministry that has assisted and empowered hundreds of adults and children touched by the disease.

But as we have witnessed over the past three decades, staunching the spread of HIV/AIDS has been and continues to be a slow and costly process. That’s no reason, however, to abandon hope or to completely remove the pandemic from our collective consciousness.