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The 11 most important AIDS stories of 2009
, 365gay.com
12.01.2009 8:54am EST
12.01.2009 8:54am EST
Today is the 21st anniversary of World AIDS Day , the international day that reflects on the global health epidemic .
There are 33 million people infected with the virus worldwide,
including 2.31 million in India alone
According
to the World AIDS Campaign, new figures have been released by the World
Health Organization and UNAIDS estimating that the number of new HIV
infections have declined each year by about 17% from 2001 to 2008, but
for every five people infected, only two start treatment.
Here is a look at 11 news stories on HIV/AIDS that have been significant in 2009.
1. The first doctor to report on AIDS dies in his home
In July, Dr. Joel Weisman, the private physician who co-authored the first AIDS report in 1981, died at 66.
In
1980, Weisman tended to three gay patients with a collection of
symptoms that soon became known as signposts for AIDS. Weisman referred
the three men to Dr. Martin Gottlieb, a University of California – Los
Angeles immunologist.
Weisman and Gottlieb wrote a brief based on
their findings published in a June 1981 issue of Morbidity and
Mortality Weekly Report and it became the first report on AIDS in
medical literature.
Weisman was ill for several months with heart
disease before he died in his Los Angeles home with his partner, Bill
Hutton, by his side.
2. HIV travel ban ends
On
Oct. 30, President Barack Obama signed an extension of the Ryan White
HIV/AIDS bill. The legislation provides care, treatment and support
services to half a million people infected with the virus, most of whom
are low-income.
The Department of Health and Human Services also implemented a new regulation to end the HIV Travel and Immigration Ban.
Obama
said, “We often speak as if AIDS is going on somewhere else. Often
overlooked is that we face a serious HIV/AIDS epidemic of our own.”
There
are over one million people living with HIV/AIDS in the United States;
more than 56,000 cases are added each year. For 22 years, the U.S. had
one of the strictest policies on the immigration and travel of
HIV-positive people, banning them from the country.
Obama hopes lifting of the ban will help end the stigma attached to HIV/AIDS.
The regulation goes into effect in January.
3. AIDS is top killer of young women around the world
A
study released in November by the World Health Organization showed that
HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of death in women ages 15 to 44. Of the
30.8 million HIV-positive adults in 2007, 15.5 million were women.
WHO
identified unprotected sex as the highest factor for 1 in 5 deaths
within the demographic. WHO also reported that lack of access to
contraceptives puts young women at higher risk.
“Women who do not
know how to protect themselves from such infections, or who are unable
to do so, face increased risks of death or illness,” said WHO in their
91-page report.
The report showed that “Young women are
particularly vulnerable to HIV infection, due to a combination of
biological factors, lack of access to information and services, and
social norms and values that undermine their ability to protect
themselves.”
4. AIDS rates rise in the nation’s capital
In
March, Health officials released a report revealing that at least 3
percent of residents in the Washington, D.C. area are living with
HIV/AIDS.
Almost 1 in 10 of those residents between ages 40 and
49 are living with HIV; and black men have the highest infection rate
at almost 7 percent.
The findings in the 2008 epidemiology report
by the D.C. HIV/AIDS Administration point to the severe epidemic that’s
impacting every race and sex across the population and neighborhoods.
The
report said that the number of cases increased drastically by 22
percent and the number one mode of transmission is men having sex with
men. The second mode of transmission noted is by heterosexual drug
users.
5. New strain of HIV discovered
European scientists discovered a new strain of HIV linked to gorillas.
This
may be the first time scientists have documented transmission of a
simian immunodeficiency virus from gorillas to humans. All other known
strains of HIV have been linked to chimpanzees.
One explanation for the new virus’s emergence and transmission is the human’s slaughtering of apes and eating of their meat.
The
virus strain was identified in 2004 when a 62-year-old arrived in Paris
from Cameroon, West Africa. Scientists reported that the woman had lost
weight and had been ill with fever a number of times in 2003.
The
report, published in August, presumed that she had been infected
through sex. The woman told doctors that she had sexual partners since
her husband’s death in 1984, but she didn’t know if they were infected.
6. AIDS advocate Martin Delany dies at 63
In January, Martin Delaney, a prominent advocate for AIDS, died in San Rafael, Calif.
The
cause was liver cancer, said Dana Van Gorder, executive director of
Project Inform, an AIDS advocacy organization based in San Francisco
that Mr. Delaney helped found in 1985.
When several of his
friends became infected and died, Delaney was drawn to the AIDS
movement. However, he was never diagnosed with the HIV virus himself.
Delany
challenged the government and drug companies to expedite access to
experimental treatments. By the early 1990s, Delaney was a leader in
his efforts to push the Food and Drug Administration to approve
promising drugs more speedily.
From 1991 to 1995 he was a member of the AIDS Research Advisory Committee.
The
Director of the institute, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, said in a statement,
“Millions of people are now receiving life-saving antiretroviral
medications from a treatment pipeline that Marty Delaney played a key
role in opening and expanding.”
Delany was 63.
7. $100 million for AIDS Vaccine Research
A
businessman pledged $100 million to Massachusetts General Hospital to
create an institute that will search for vaccines for AIDS and other
infectious diseases.
Phillip Ragon, 59, is the founder and sole
owner of InterSystems Corp., a Cambridge company that provides database
software to hospitals and other industries. His donation will create an
institute in his name that will bring scientists, clinicians and
engineers together from Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology and Massachusetts General to fight infectious diseases
and cancers.
The Phillip T. and Susan M. Ragon Institute will mainly work towards finding an effective vaccine against AIDS.
According to hospital officials, the $100 million pledge is the largest donation in the hospital’s history.
8. HIV in the porn industry
22 actors in adult sex movies contracted HIV since 2004, according to Los Angeles Health officials.
The
officials accused the pornography industry’s health clinic of failing
to cooperate with state investigations and of failing to protect
industry workers and their sexual partners.
In June, an actress who works in Southern California’s porn industry tested positive for HIV.
A
timeline shows that the actress tested negative for HIV on April 29,
but that a positive test result was confirmed on June 4. The woman then
performed in a film on June 5 for undisclosed reasons and a second test
came back positive on June 6.
The actor who performed with the
infected woman on June 5 tested negative for the virus, but HIV
infections have months-long incubation periods.
Health advocates have pressed for legislation requiring condom use in sex scenes.
According
to Steven Hirsch, chief executive of Vivid Entertainment, condoms are
optional among actors. “Performers have the right to choose to use or
not use condoms,” said Hirsch. “They’re adults; they know what industry
they’re in.”
9. HIV rates rise drastically among Asian men
The
WHO reported that the AIDS virus is spreading rapidly among Asian men.
Asia is believed to have the world’s largest number of men who have sex
with other men, with an estimate of 10 million.
There is very low
usage of condoms among younger men in male to male relationships and
local authorities have not successfully educated the youth about the
disease and prevention, said health officials.
“Younger men
engaging in sex with men are entering into a sexual arena without the
same level of awareness and without taking the same level of protection
that the older generation was taking,” said Massimo Ghidinelli, the
World Health Organization’s regional adviser on HIV/AIDS.
Ghidinelli
also warned that the epidemic will worsen drastically unless there is
better education and politics to fight the spread of the disease.
10. South Africa stops funding AIDS research
South Africa stopped funding research for the AIDS vaccine according to a leading scientist.
Anna-Lise
Williamson, an AIDS researcher at the University of Cape Town, told The
Associated Press that the clinical vaccine trial on humans would
continue on its way with U.S. funding but that South Africa’s
Department of Science and Technology would stopped funding her research.
Even
though South Africa’s science minister appeared with Williamson at a
ceremony to launch the vaccine trial, he did not immediately return
calls regarding the termination of his funding.
“For vaccine
development presently, the South African AIDS Vaccine initiative has no
money,” Williamson said. “If we do not continue working on this, we
will never have a vaccine… it’s incredibly important that we keep
working.”
Around 5.2 million South Africans were living with HIV
last year – the highest number of any country in the world. Young women
were hit the hardest, with one-third of those aged 20-to-34 infected
with the virus.
11. Court rules in favor of Chicago drug maker
A
federal appeals court rejected a lawsuit that accused Chicago drug
maker, Abbott Laboratories, of antitrust violations over a sudden
400-percent price hike of a popular AIDS drug.
The company was
sued in 2004 by advocacy groups and drug benefit providers. They said
that Abbott raised the price of the HIV-fighting Norvir to defeat
competition and boost sales of Kaletra, its own alternative to Norvir.
Abbott
paid $10 million to settle the lawsuit and agreed to let the 9th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals determine if the price hike was illegal.
The court ruled in Abbott’s favor Tuesday. If it had lost, Abbott would have had to pay an additional $17.5 million.