HIV/AIDS Will Add Massively To Its Global Death Toll, As Current Strategy's Flaws Become Evident

I was hesitant about including this piece in the Globalization and Politics channel. But HIV/AIDS is not only a health issue: "The biggest barriers now to ending the epidemic are ideologically and politically driven," as the president of the International AIDS Society (IAS) Linda-Gail Bekker said in recent days.

She is emphasizing the importance holding policymakers and donors accountable to the necessity of pursuing science-based policies, ensuring funding, and working together to ensure the eradication of AIDS. And as noted in a recent report, key populations are still not fully included in programs supposedly aimed at providing the services they need.

Indeed, progress is not only slowing as countries are likely set to miss critical 2020 targets to eliminate HIV. Infections are rising, related deaths are not falling fast enough, and there seems to be not enough financial support to continue driving the cause forth.

This is why Laurie Garrett's piece in Foreign Policy must be read — as it is intended — as a timely warning call.

She explains that there are three elements "contributing to [the virus'] runaway resurgence: flawed public health strategy, rapidly shifting demography, and diminished resources".

In 2017, 940,000 people died of HIV-related causes, for example, and strains of HIV spreading today are more resistant variations. Countries in the developing world, lacking proper infrastructure and undergoing rapid demographic growth, are likely unable to step up to the challenge. And the US, one of the world's key donors, is reneging its commitment to fight the virus.

The strategy now in place has reached a critical turning point, Garrett writes, as time is ticking while the world still awaits "a technology that truly vanquishes the HIV threat". That remains to be discovered and put to use.