Diary Prequel Package — page 245

052 (see above) I have been arguing forcibly that we need to make the investment now or else not only will lives be lost, but we will have to pay more later for the infections that we could have prevented. See my interview published today in Nature with Erika Check Hayden Drug treatment for HIV infection is effective in preventing its spread, but implementing this fully will require more resources, says leading NIH scientist. Erika Check Hayden Anthony FauciBloomberg News/Landov/Photoshot This week, political leaders meet in New York for a United Nations summit that will frame the ongoing fight against HIV/AIDS. The conference comes a decade after the UN meeting at which heads of state committed the first major funding to the battle; as a result, 6.6 million people are now receiving antiretroviral drug therapy to keep their HIV infection under control -- 22 times the number in 2001, according to estimates by the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). But 9 million people who need treatment are still not getting it, and global economic woes threaten to weaken international AIDS programmes. Anthony Fauci, head of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, explains what scientists hope the UN meeting will achieve. How is the research landscape different going into this meeting than it was a decade ago? A considerable number of people have been put on therapy. But for every person who goes on therapy, two or two-and-a-half people get newly infected, so there's been this question of the balance between treatment and prevention. A real game changer occurred just a few weeks ago with the clear demonstration in heterosexual couples that when you start treatment earlier rather than later, you not only benefit the person infected, but that person is also 96% less likely to transmit the virus to