•User Rating•: / 0
•Poor••Best• 

A new initiative, aids2031 has been launched to look critically at the world’s current response to HIV and anticipate the future of the pandemic. The project was kicked-off toward the end of January 2008 at the World Economic Forum by a partnership of research, philanthropy, business and government leaders. The year 2031 will mark 50 years since AIDS was first identified, and, as more countries struggle to cope with the impact of AIDS, hard questions need to be asked about how the world has responded thus far to a disease that has killed an estimated 25 million people, and currently affects another 32-35 million. More crucial, however, is to identify the course of action needed for the next phase of the epidemic. aids2031 is a unique forum that aims to ask those hard questions and provide much-needed recommendations for the future.

Have communities, particularly men who have sex with other males in the West become complacent about the spread of AIDS? Is the world doing enough to help men, women and children suffering from AIDS in the poorest countries or in countries in crisis, such as during the recent turmoil in Kenya? Are enough resources being channeled toward mitigating the impact of AIDS? Given that less than 15-20% of the world’s affected know their HIV status, is it time to stop treating AIDS as a special case, and start treating it as a disease like any other? Or are HIV related stigma and discrimination still too strong to forgo “AIDS exceptionalism”?

According to Peter Piot, Executive Director of UNAIDS in Geneva, the world is at a critical turning point in its response to AIDS. “What we do today will determine the face of AIDS in 2031,” he said. Piot believes it is time to shift today’s global AIDS response from a short-term crisis management approach to planning for a more longer-term and sustained intervention. “While global warming is moving from being a long wave to a short wave phenomenon, we are seeing AIDS move from being a short-term emergency to becoming a long wave phenomenon,” he said.

The aids2031 initiative brings together working groups of economists, epidemiologists, social and political scientists, and communication experts from all over the world. Over the next two years, aids2031 will conduct a series of think tanks, public conversations, broadcast dialogues and programming, youth summits, original research as well as web-based discussions designed to encourage people to think about how society can best prepare for and live with AIDS in the future. The aids2031 initiative will also be highlighted at the Geneva Health Forum in May 2008, which will focus on global access to health and bring together over 1,200 experts from all over the world as well as world conference on AIDS in Mexico this August.

“We are committed to a simple premise: what works best to generate short-term results is often not the best way to reverse the epidemic in the long run,” maintained Stefano Bertozzi, chairperson of the aids2031 steering committee and director of Health Economics and Evaluation at the National Institute of Public Health in Cuernavaca, Mexico. “We are looking at everything with new lenses and fresh perspectives.”

aids2031 plans to release a final report with recommendations called “Agenda for the Future” in late 2009. The coordinators hope this will help guide governments, donors and civil society as they plan for the future response to AIDS.

For more information on aids2031 or ways that you can get involved, please go to: www.aids2031.org

(See The Essential Edge piece on the Geneva Health Forum http://essentialgeneva.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=121&Itemid=1 as well as the Media21 Global Journalism Network workshop www.media21geneva.org to be held in parallel as a means of promoting broader public awareness on access to health, including AIDS, worldwide).