Overall support for global AIDS efforts from donor nations flattened in the midst of last year’s global economic crisis, according to a recent analysis of 2009 funding levels from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS.
Clinton spoke with CNN’s Becky Anderson at the International AIDS Conference in Vienna, Austria.
“If we all do this, the consequences will be calamitous, and you’ll spend more money later,” Clinton said, referring to reduced donations. “You’ll start having large numbers of people dying again, you’ll [have] more political instability, more economic collapse, and it’s going to cost us more money later. So it’s not only going to be a humanitarian crisis, you’ll pay now or pay later. So if it’s at all, possible hang in there.”
After years of disappointment, researchers have finally found a potential basis for an HIV vaccine. Scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said they have discovered three human antibodies that neutralize more than 90 percent of the current circulating HIV-1 strains.
“There is a preliminary indication that sometime in the next two to three months we’ll get some reports on vaccine tests, which are very hopeful for the quick development on a vaccine that actually works,” Clinton said.
“Meanwhile, we know that if you start people on the medicine not when they have full-blown AIDS, but as soon as their so-called CD4 blood count drops below a certain amount, it can prevent 90 percent of AIDS,” he said. “That’s about as good as a vaccine. It’s not 100 percent, but if we could just do that, this whole epidemic would be in a different place in five years.”
HIV/AIDS is the world’s leading infectious killer, according to the World Health Organization. The disease accounted for an estimated 2 million deaths in 2008, and more than 33 million people are living with the disease worldwide.
Researchers said the findings put them one step closer to their goal. Among their next steps are plans to make sure other people — not just those infected with HIV — can create these types of antibodies. They also want to figure out how to be able potentially to mass-produce more “broadly-neutralizing” antibodies to block nearly all HIV strains in the future.