Analysis: Frustration grows as AIDS science and politics clash

Despite promises from governments around the world to pursue evidence-based policies, AIDS experts are frustrated at a refusal to adapt to new ways of looking at HIV and the people most at risk of contracting it.

It is a stance that displays discrimination and criminal negligence, says Julio Montaner, president of the International AIDS Society, who has led a drive at the conference to get politicians to wake up to the evidence.

"Yes we are treating five million people today, but there are 10 million people who need treatment, otherwise they will get sick and die. Not treating them amounts to criminal negligence," he told Reuters.

At the heart of scientists' frustration is the impressive progress made against the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS since it emerged in the early 1980s.

Advances in medicines have effectively turned an acute killer disease into a manageable chronic condition in many wealthy countries. Patients who take cocktails of AIDS drugs can often live normal lives -- they work, have sex, bear children and can even look forward to meeting their grandchildren.

The message from scientists is: we've given you the tools and the evidence, now give us the money to use them.

Yet the political will to fund the AIDS battle is waning, they say.

"The world has become numb to the toll of 7,400 new HIV infections every day," said Michel Sidibe, director of the United Nations AIDS programme UNDAIDS. "We need to recover our sense of outrage."

The AIDS virus infects 33.4 million people globally. In sub-Saharan Africa, 22.4 million people have it. Eastern Europe has the fastest growing HIV epidemic in the world.

Read more on Reuters.com...