WASHINGTON — Call it a triple win for fighting the AIDS epidemic: Treating people with HIV early keeps them healthy, cuts their chances of infecting others, and now research shows it’s also a good financial investment.
The International AIDS Conference closed Friday with the message that getting treatment to more of the world’s 34 million people with HIV is key to curbing the epidemic, short of a vaccine and cure that are still years away.
“It is unacceptable” that scientifically proven treatment and prevention tools aren’t reaching people who need them most, said Nobel laureate Dr. Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, co-discoverer of the AIDS virus and new president of the International AIDS Society, at the meeting’s closing session.
Spreading treatment will be hugely expensive upfront, but Harvard researchers said Friday that the investment would save hard-hit South Africa some money over five years, as savings from treating AIDS-related illnesses exceed the medications’ price.
Eventually those savings will be overtaken by the costs of treating millions for decades, but treatment-as-prevention is highly cost-effective, said Dr. Rochelle Walensky of the Harvard Center for AIDS Research.
“People used to think there was no way we can do this,” said Dr. Diane Havlir of the University of California, San Francisco, who was co-chairwoman of the world’s largest AIDS meeting. With both scientific and financial validation, “for the first time we’re optimistic that we can.”
But new U.S. data show how hard effective treatment is. In developed countries, most HIV patients have access to treatment, and guidelines say they all should be offered it right after diagnosis. Yet only one in four has the infection under control, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Friday.
