Prevention, cultural changes must lead AIDS battle:expert

By Chris Cermak Nov 30, 2006, 22:58 GMT

Washington - Treating the millions of sufferers of HIV and AIDS may the subject of science and medicine, but preventing the spread of this deadly disease cannot be done without changing the cultural norms that drive it.

That was the message Thursday during a 'stock-taking' discussion by the World Bank and US-based Family Health International (FHI) leaders on the eve of World Aids Day, which sought to emphasize the benefits and cost effectiveness of prevention techniques such as contraception.

'We are not giving prevention a chance,' said Debrework Zewdie, director of the World Bank's global HIV/AIDS programme, at a news conference in Washington. Zewdie characterized the choice as 'pay now for prevention or pay more later for treatment.'

An average of between 4 and 5 million people worldwide are newly infected with HIV every year, and the epidemic now afflicts 39.5 million people, recent statistics showed. Antiretroviral drugs have allowed many AIDS patients to live longer and fuller lives than ever before, yet for every patient treated with antiretrovirals annually, almost three more are contracting the disease.

'Do the math - we are losing the HIV war,' said Ward Cates, president of research at FHI, a US-based non-profit organization that focuses on public health in the developing world.

There is no one solution to the AIDS epidemic, but Cates argues that a greater focus should be placed on sexual health and the benefits of preventing unwanted pregnancies in combatting the disease.

Each day, 1,500 children worldwide become infected with HIV, the vast majority of them newborns.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, which accounts for two-thirds of all AIDS sufferers, FHI estimates that contraception is already preventing about 170,000 unwanted pregnancies annually that would have resulted in HIV-positive infants. The group says that number could be doubled if all women who did not want to become pregnant got the help and tools they needed.

On a scale of increasing importance from one to 10, Cates rated the importance of science in the struggle at about three. He put a seven next to the impacting if cultural norms, political will, community standards, and what he calls 'the general determinants of health.'

But changing cultural norms is difficult, because each society has different norms that impact their view of prevention techniques - whether its using condoms or reducing the number of sexual partners.

'What we are trying to do is meet them where they are in terms of their personal norms or their societal norms,' Cates told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa following the news conference. 'We need multiple, reinforcing messages that slowly but surely will ... add up to measurable population changes.'

It's a slow process, but so is progress on medical solutions such as AIDS vaccines. Scientists working in that field don't expect an effective vaccine for anothere ten years.

The United Nations has set a goal of 2015 for halting the spread of AIDS and reversing its course. The biggest challenge will be ensuring 'complacency' doesn't set in among governments which have begun to take action, the World Bank's Zewdie said.