On HIV/AIDS
Like so many other events of its kind, the recent high-profile HIV/AIDS workshop in New York (Rich Nations leaving the poor to die of AIDS, in The Jakarta Post, Dec. 19) failed to come up with realistic and workable solutions.
Castigating so-called rich nations for not providing more funds for AIDS treatment or rehashing already well-publicized HIV/AIDS statistics is of little use to combat the virus or to prevent it from spreading.
By most accounts, at least 40 million people worldwide are infected with the HIV/AIDS virus of which the annual death toll is estimated at three million. New infections, however, are estimated at a staggering five million, which means that existing measures are just not working and that drastic new approaches are needed to contain the disease or to prevent it from spreading. An unavoidable first step would require systematic and comprehensive HIV/AIDS tests among high-risk population groups worldwide.
Such a herculean undertaking would be extremely difficult, but not impossible to carry out and if necessary, available AIDS funds should be allocated for detection, rather than treatment programs. Resistance from already infected as well as from undetected HIV/AIDS virus carriers amongst high-risk population groups would have to be overcome but all-out detection is the only realistic way to come to grips with the disease.
Drastic problems require drastic solutions and as ruthless as it may sound, spending money on life-prolonging AIDS treatments rather than detection and prevention programs could, in many instances, turn out to be the wrong choice.
The toughest problem in combating AIDS however, would be how to prevent those who tested positive from transmitting the disease. Individual restraint, or safe sex practices, cannot be relied on whereas placing HIV/AIDS virus carriers under quarantine are not an option either.
SARS and avian flu have nevertheless proven that in the face of pandemic diseases threatening entire populations worldwide, preventive and remedial action is possible and that the HIV/AIDS problem should be addressed in a similar manner.
JOE SPARTZ Jakarta