|
PARIS - UNIVERSAL and voluntary testing for HIV and early access to antiretroviral drugs could slash infections of the Aids virus by 95 per cent within a decade, a study said on Wednesday.
Published online by the British journal The Lancet ahead of World Aids Day next Monday, the investigation takes an idealised look at what would happen if a country suffering a massive, South African-style Aids epidemic introduced this two-pronged strategy.
New infections of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) would plummet to a rate of to just one person in 1,000 within 10 years of implementation, amounting to a fall of 95 per cent, say the authors.
The results boost arguments that helping people to know their HIV status earlier encourages safe sex, they say.
And giving infected people the cocktail of HIV drugs - which reduces the level of virus in the body - likewise reduces the risk of passing on the pathogen to others, they argue.
'(...) Only universal voluntary HIV testing and immediate initiation of ART could reduce transmission to the point at which elimination might be feasible by 2020 for a generalised epidemic,' the paper says.
South Africa has the world's highest rate of HIV with some 5.5 million people infected out of a population of 47 million. The epidemic has become generalised chiefly through heterosexual intercourse.
The research was led by Reuben Granich of the UN's World Health Organisation (WHO), although the agency was careful to say the paper aimed at spurring debate and was not an official policy.
And it noted that a whole range of hurdles - from lack of funds to drug resistance and toxicity - needed to be cleared before the double strategy of universal HIV tests and drug access could be achieved.
Around 33 million people have HIV or Aids.
As of last year, three million badly-infected poor people were able to grasp the drug lifeline, but this is still two-thirds short of a goal of universal access of 2010, enshrined by the UN and supported by the Group of Eight (G-8).
Separately, a grassroots watchdog said the fight against Aids was being badly hampered by an independent yardstick of how countries performed in key areas such as data collection, their focus on vulnerable sectors of the population, financing and access to treatment.
'More than 25 years into the Aids epidemic, there is still no methodologically rigourous independent rating system that holds governments and other actors accountable for their promises,' said Mr Rodrigo Garay, executive director of Aids Accountability International (AAI). -- AFP
| 
