HIV
Human Immunodeficiency Virus. There were an estimated 1.7 million new HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa in 2007. An estimated 22.5 million people living with HIV, or 68% of the global total, are in sub-Saharan Africa. Eight countries in this region now account for almost one-third of all new HIV infections and AIDS deaths globally. HIV in Africa is indeed a modern plague, in some countries infecting over 35% of the population and decreasing overall national average life span estimates by 10 -15 years. The GVI focus will be on HIV clade C, the predominant HIV genotype circulating in southern Africa, the Indian subcontinent and China.
HIV has infected over 60 million people since its discovery in the early 1980’s. In 2007 33.2 million people were estimated to be living with HIV, 2.5 million people became newly infected and 2.1 million people died of AIDS. The economic and social impact of this disease is seen in two figures: reduced life expectancy and orphaned children. Life expectancy in South Africa, for a child born in the 1950’s, was 44 years. By the 1990’s this had climbed to 59 years. For a child born between 2005 and 2010, life expectancy is again less than 45 years. In Botswana, two-thirds of boys currently aged 15 will die prematurely due to AIDS. In South Africa, deaths in the 15-34 year old cohort will be 17 times higher than in the absence of AIDS. At the end of 2001, 14 million children had lost one or both parents to AIDS. Projections to 2010 estimate that 48% of all orphans in southern Africa, some 20 million children, will have lost their parent(s) to AIDS and that between 15 and 25% of all children will be AIDS orphans.
The current cost of treatment with anti-retroviral drugs in South Africa is about $100 per person per month. Therefore, the projected cost of treatment for all those infected in sub-Saharan Africa, even at this deeply discounted drug price, is $34 billion/year, a figure that is completely unsustainable. It is quite clear that an effective, affordable vaccine is the one intervention that has any hope of stopping this pandemic.