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Best to focus on preventing HIV in Africa, says report

30 November 2010

Efforts to treat everyone in Africa infected with the AIDS virus are virtually futile, and public health experts should instead focus on preventing new cases, a committee of experts reported yesterday.

Currently 22.5 million people in Africa have HIV, but this number will rise to more than 30 million by 2020 – far more than can be treated with current resources, according to the report from the U.S. Institute of Medicine.

At least 12 million of them will need treatment, but only seven million will likely get those drugs, the committee of international AIDS experts appointed by the Institute said.

The U.S. government, other governments and non-profit groups have spent billions to get drugs to patients in Africa and elsewhere and have negotiated deals to get companies to agree to license and make cheap generic versions of the drugs.

But it is not enough and spending is unlikely to grow much, the committee said. African nations need to share responsibility more, the report suggests.

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