Treatment Policy

During the last two decades, due to a confluence of structural factors, including the active participation of civil society groups, a substantial number of countries achieved good results in the control of the disease, as illustrated by decreases in mortality rates, effective treatment protocols, expansion of prevention programs, the development of promising new technologies of both treatment and prevention, development of protective legislations and measures to enhance respect to the human rights of the most affected populations.

However, positive indicators and good practices are not uniformly distributed around the globe. In several countries, universal access to effective treatment is far from being a reality, financial resources are still missing to undertake effective prevention strategies and almost everywhere moral conservative cultural, religious and judicial environments restrict access to prevention and treatment, enhance stigma, and facilitate violations of the rights of people living with HIV and AIDS and of those groups that are most vulnerable to the epidemic, such as MSM, sex workers, young people. Furthermore, in several countries the pillars of good prevention and treatment practices that constituted the core of the response to the epidemics have also started to show cracks.

Yet, current discourses and policy propositions, to a large extent, make resource to technological solutions in detriment of social and cultural interventions that remain strategic in the response to the epidemic. After more than 15 years of trying unsuccessfully to deliver proven effective treatment therapies to all who need them around the world, biomedical solutions, even when they are available, depend on social and political systems for their delivery. The GAPW believes that, equally important, “tech fixes” cannot fully resolve complex social and economic problems, such as the phenomenon of growing religious dogmatism or the persistence of unequal patterns of resource and power distribution in most societies.

The AIDS 2031 Commission’s experts report on the first 50 years of the AIDS pandemic: the 30 years that have passed since AIDS was first diagnosed, and the prospects and best plans to address the ongoing worldwide AIDS epidemic over the coming 20 years. The authors address the entire scope of the pandemic: basic science, public health, funding, treatment options, and social and societal impacts and review the full range of possible and recommended responses over the next two decades. They carefully assess the progress that has been made, and both persistent and emerging challenges. It´s considered the single best source of reliable information on where the pandemic stands today, where it’s headed, and what can be done to create better outcomes between now and 2031.

• Copyright 2011
• Pages: 176
• ISBN-10: 0-13-261414-6
• ISBN-13: 978-0-13-261414-6

Soon