Sagittarius
04-23-2014, 02:30 PM
HIV in the world
30 years after its discovery
More than 34 million people now live with HIV/AIDS. In 2011, there were 2,5 million new infected adults and children. The same year, AIDS caused 1.7 million deaths.
"The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) which causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) was discovered 30 years ago. In 1983, French and American scientists working separately came to the same conclusion and published their findings. Identifying and isolating the virus was an early step in setting out to fight it.
In spite of virologist Luc Montagnier’s pioneering work with the then mysterious new disease, he estimates that 34 million people throughout the world are living with it today.
Our Paris correspondent Giovanni Magi asked if enough research has been done in the past three decades.
Montagnier said: “AIDS is not finished, although a lot of young people believe it is because there are medicines for it. Research is fundamentally important, since it works towards developing shorter treatments for people, theoretically so that after a six-to-nine month course of treatment they would become HIV-negative. That is not the case today, and so a lot of research has to be done in this area. The second key area is knowing why the epidemic is still spreading so strongly, especially in South Africa – in a lot of regions in Africa, where women are affected at a disproportionately high rate, which is not the case further north in the world. In my opinion, there are also biological factors with these people, which we can treat. It’s not about treating the virus but about treating factors which make the virus more transmissible. That is entirely possible, even without a vaccine.”
Professor Montagnier highlighted South Africa; the second-worst affected country is Botswana, with one in every four adults HIV-infected. Sixty-nine percent of all the HIV cases in the world are in sub-Saharan Africa."
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Maggie the Cat from "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." by Tennessee Williams
Maggie the Cat from "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." by Tennessee Williams
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