21 July 2014

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Health Report 28 min 2 speakers 8 chapters transcribed 4 days ago

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What is the purpose of the 2014 International AIDS Conference in Melbourne?

Norman Swan 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Health Report with me, Norman Swann. We're coming to you today from Melbourne from the twentieth International AIDS Conference, AIDS two oh one four. Twelve and a half thousand delegates, the largest health conference ever in Australia, and major issues still for an epidemic that is of tragic proportions around the world. It has not gone away, we have not solved the problems, and we've got two of the key people at the conference uh with us today on the programme. We've got Gottfried Hernshaw, who's director of of HIV at the World Health Organization. He's also head of the global programme on hepatitis. And as you'll hear later, hepatitis is still an issue with people with HIV as well.

Norman Swan 0:36

It's called co infection. And also with us is Professor Sharon Lewin, who's co chair of the conference and director of the Department of Infectious Diseases at the Alfred Hospital and Monash University also in Melbourne. Welcome to you both. Sharon, um it's it's just hard t we have to start and there's not a compulsion here, but the the impact of the MH seventeen and the people who went down with it from the conference has just been enormous.

Sharon Lewin 1:01

It has. It's had um obviously a great effect on our delegates. I think it's had a great effect on the world really, with the loss of senseless loss of life. Uh for many countries, including Australia and obviously Victoria and and of course the conference with six delegates that were on their way uh to AIDS twenty fourteen.

Norman Swan 1:22

And just tell us about those delegates.

Sharon Lewin 1:24

Well the delegates were uh included key researchers, um b uh clinical researchers and and community advocates uh who were um you know passionate about their work. One of them I knew well, uh that's Joep uh Lange, who's a Dutch researcher and his partner Jacqueline. And uh was a previous president of the International Aid Society, had a huge impact on many aspects of our response, including particularly getting anti HIV drugs into low income countries.

Norman Swan 1:54

And we'll come back to that later. And at WHO you lost your communications officer.

Gottfried Hirnschall 1:58

Yes, uh we did, very unfortunately. So and uh obviously uh this was a real shock. We are saddened, we are angry, uh but uh at the same time uh It's an inspiration to keep on going. Uh

Norman Swan 2:12

and and tragically not the first time that a plane crash has taken a leading AIDS researcher. I mean Jonathan Mann in the late nineteen nineties, a c a crash off the United States. And he was going to an AIDS conference as well, was he not? Yes. So anyway, um hopefully it's the last time anything like that happens. Gottfried, just give us some of the numbers here because they are still stark and troubling.

Gottfried Hirnschall 2:36

Indeed. I think We are seeing some good news and we're seeing some gaps in the global response to to HIV. Uh yes, some numbers. There are still one point five million people who died in twenty thirteen. There are still more than two million people who got newly infected, two point one million new infections in one year.

How many delegates attended and what impact did the MH17 tragedy have on the conference?

Gottfried Hirnschall 2:57

And there are still a lot of uh kids, babies actually, who also got infected. There are still two hundred forty thousand babies who got infected.

Norman Swan 3:05

Which is entirely preventable.

Gottfried Hirnschall 3:07

Which is entirely preventable of course. The the the the good news, however, is that this is a major reduction compared to previous years. And uh in terms of the the the the people who died, there's uh this is a twenty five percent reduction compared to two thousand and nine. So the numbers have really come down.

Norman Swan 3:26

Twenty five percent mm in four of in four years. Yes, yes.

Gottfried Hirnschall 3:30

Obviously this is a result of treatment access. More and more people have access to treatment, which we know is life saving. And uh that is certainly the other piece of good news that more and more people, thirteen million people by the end of two thousand and thirteen uh are now accessing life saving treatment. And if you compare this to where we were Not so long ago, two thousand and one, two thousand and two, where people in low and middle income countries basically had no access. We have really seen a tremendous uh movement uh that helped uh providing access to people uh who would have otherwise died.