Delivering Antiretroviral Drugs Worldwide Requires ‘Social, Political Movement,’ Opinion Piece Says
Delivering antiretroviral drugs to people worldwide "is no easy task" and will require a "global social and political movement" with the "commitment of world leaders, the necessary financial resources and a solid scientific and public health anchor," Diane Havlir, University of California-San Francisco School of Medicine professor and chief of the HIV/AIDS Division and Positive Health Program at San Francisco General Hospital, and Robert Grant, UCSF School of Medicine associate professor and associate investigator at the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology, write in a San Francisco Chronicle opinion piece. Although the "road ahead" in the global response to the pandemic "will no doubt be uphill," the "urgency is great," Havlir and Grant say. As individuals fighting HIV/AIDS in San Francisco know, "we learn to use new drugs through extensive collaborations between laboratory scientists, clinicians, the patients themselves and their community organizations," according to Havlir and Grant. Although the XV International AIDS Conference, which was held last month in Bangkok, Thailand, showed "how discussion across these particular points of view can be difficult," it also showed "how it frequently gives rise to new approaches to therapy and prevention" and "how the human community could work together to combat a difficult global problem," Havlir and Grant conclude (Havlir/Grant, San Francisco Chronicle, 8/11).
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