World AIDS Day marked by breakthroughs in science

Successes highlight crucial US support for research

The run-up to this year's World AIDS Day on December 1 has been studded with monumental achievements in HIV/AIDS prevention research. Over the last 16 months, we have seen several scientific breakthroughs that have the potential to change the course of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, including:

• The first evidence of the effectiveness of any vaccine in preventing HIV infection.
• The first proof of concept that a microbicide gel would work.
• Most recently, evidence that a daily dose of antiretroviral drugs provides protection against HIV infection through a prevention method known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP.

The fruits of these scientific discoveries hold the potential to save the lives of populations worldwide, including Americans. For example, support to develop an effective HIV vaccine can be used to prevent new infections in the United States, while American women will be able to use microbicides to protect themselves from HIV.

This is a unique moment in time in the fight against HIV/AIDS, and US policymakers should seize upon these recent successes and continue to support the research needed to deliver new prevention tools into the hands of people at risk of the disease worldwide.

In fact, these successes are promising developments that were each supported by the US Government. The trials that yielded these results were funded by the US Department of Defense through the US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command and the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR), the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the US Agency for International Development (USAID). These—and many other—scientific breakthroughs demonstrate the remarkable difference that US support for global health research makes in the fight against HIV/AIDS and other diseases, for people in the United States and abroad. Without this continued support, research efforts could falter and hopes for a new arsenal of HIV prevention products could be dashed.

Because of these promising new scientific results in HIV prevention, "everyone—from scientists to policymakers to the public—[should] use World AIDS Day, December 1, as a catalyst to build on these advances by mobilizing communities to embrace HIV prevention as a social norm and advocate for the funding required for the next round of research," Jeffrey Sturchio, president and CEO of the Global Health Council, Ward Cates, president of research at Family Health International (FHI), and Salim Abdool Karim, director of CAPRISA, wrote in a Huffington Post opinion piece to mark World AIDS Day. They added, "Much work remains to be done, but by building support for these critical next steps, we can also build hope for a future World AIDS Day free of AIDS.”

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