Have you heard? The AIDS crisis is over.
That's right. You no longer have to die from the disease, so you no longer have to care about it either.
It wasn't that long ago U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell was telling president George W. Bush that AIDS represented the greatest threat to mankind. You couldn't find a rock star or actor who wasn't climbing aboard the bandwagon. But the world, it seems, has moved on.
"People have lost interest," says Dr. Julio Montaner, Canada's gift to the world of HIV-AIDS research and leadership. And as soon as people lose interest, their governments do too.
Certainly underlying this phenomenon is the perception that AIDS is no longer the death sentence it once was. A new treatment known as highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) has been successful in reversing the virus's spread.
HAART reduces HIV to such low levels in a person's body that the likelihood of transmission through sex or needle-sharing has been greatly diminished. People diagnosed at 20 can now expect to live a full life.
But HAART is not a vaccine. And not everyone has access to it yet. In fact, 60 per cent of the people in the world who need treatment for the disease are not getting it. Consequently, an estimated 5,500 people are still dying from it every day around the world. You can do the yearly math.
South Africa is facing an AIDS crisis in which nearly six million people are infected.
"We were in South Africa for the Cape Town conference [on AIDS]last summer," Dr. Montaner told me. "Every day, the newspaper had a story about 30 per cent of doctors being infected with HIV, 30 per cent of nurses, 30 per cent of teachers. It means their whole infrastructure is crumbling. It means society as a whole becomes fragile." The impact the disease can have on a family unit is devastating. It often leads to even worse poverty. Children have to leave school to try and support their parents. Often, such children turn to prostitution. The consequences are often lethal.
Multiply the collapse of a single family unit by millions. It can have a destabilizing impact on a world.
But all that feels like yesterday's news. There are other, more important things to occupy the media's attention. Did Tiger Woods's wife use a 3-wood or a pitching wedge when she broke his SUV's window? And how did those Washington poseurs crash that White House party anyway?
Canada's Conservative government has never felt comfortable talking about AIDS. It must be relieved so few others are talking about it these days as well. It's allowed Ottawa to walk away from a commitment made in 2005 to help fund universal access to HIV prevention, treatment and care by 2010.
UNAIDS had previously estimated that universal access would cost $61-billion between 2008 and 2010, with two-thirds of that amount coming from international donors. An analysis by the International AIDS Society done at the beginning of this year showed that G8 countries - including Canada - had committed less than half of the amount they promised.
At the G8's July summit in L'Aquila, Italy, and at a more recent meeting of G8 health experts there, AIDS wasn't even mentioned. Dr. Montaner is hoping Prime Minister Stephen Harper will put the disease back on the agenda when G8 and G20 leaders gather in Canada next year, but he's also realistic.
"Our federal leadership is just not interested in this issue," says Dr. Montaner. "I've written so many letters to them, even in my present capacity as president of the International AIDS Society, and all I ever get back are form letters that say: 'We're not interested.' "
Not even research showing that getting treatment for HIV-AIDS makes economic sense seems to move the Conservatives. But think about it: People who aren't getting treated are just getting sicker by the day. They are unable to work. They become a financial drain. In Canada, treatment costs $15,000 a year per person. But it gets patients back on their feet as productive members of society.
"We need to start talking about this disease again," says Dr. Montaner. "People are hoping this problem is just going to go away. It's not. It will get worse again if ignored. All the progress we've made will disappear."
Gary Mason