AIDS around world - Where do we go from here?

Spending

Money is finally being spent on both treating the disease and on preventing new infections from occurring. This spending needs to increase both in it's magnitude and it's effectiveness. Many people fail to realise that actually spending money, in the very large sums the fight against HIV requires, is a difficult task, and one which many organisations have little experience of.

The Global Fund, an organisation created to channel money to where around the world it is most needed, is an already-existing way of effectively spending money. Many governments, however, wish to exert control over how their donations are spent and on what projects, so they prefer to channel their funding through other diverse organisations, which may often have no experience of spending such sums. The Global Fund, as a direct result of this, is in danger of being unable to meet it's funding agreements. Governments need to meet their promises to the Global Fund, and to increase them.

Education

In the early days of the epidemic, HIV prevention work was done at a high-profile, national level in many high-income countries. This work has all-but foundered, and needs to be re-invigorated. Education has already been proved to be effective and necessary, both for people who are not infected with HIV, to empower them to protect themselves from HIV, and for people who are HIV+, to help them to live with the virus. There is a huge wealth of educational resources available around the world, and yet in many places people still lack the knowledge they need to protect themselves.

Medication

Anti-retroviral AIDS medication is now being distributed to low-income, high prevalence countries, but it is taking a long time to actually reach the people who need it. The provision and distribution of medication needs to be greatly speeded up if millions of deaths are to be avoided. When the medication finally reaches the areas where it is needed, trained nurses must be available to carry out HIV tests, administer the medicines, and teach people how to use them.

HIV has now finally been recognised as a global threat, and people are beginning to take action to prevent it killing many more millions than those who have already died. This action needs not only to continue, but to be speeded up considerable. The HIV epidemic is growing, and efforts to fight it need to grow at a greater rate then the epidemic if they are to be successful.

An ever-growing AIDS epidemic is not inevitable; yet, unless action against the epidemic is scaled up drastically, the damage already done will seem minor compared with what lies ahead. This may sound dramatic, but it is hard to play down the effects of a disease that stands to kill more than half of the young adults in the countries where it has its firmest hold. Entire families, communities and countries will begin to collapse if this situation is allowed to occur.