BARCELONA (voa) – Delegates at the world’s largest-ever AIDS conference in Barcelona, Spain are to hear from pharmaceutical companies Monday about the promise of new drugs designed to fight the global pandemic and treat millions of its victims.
Swiss and U.S. drug companies say new medicines are being developed that would attack HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, before it infects the human cell. Current AIDS drugs attack the virus only after it enters the cell. The new medicines could bring hope to patients resistant to approved AIDS drugs.
AIDS medicines are at the top of the agenda for the 14th International AIDS Conference that opened Sunday, amid calls for governments to provide affordable, life-saving drugs to victims in poor countries.
United Nations AIDS Program Executive Director Peter Piot opened the conference, saying that despite increased awareness and political attention in recent years, funding for AIDS research and treatment is still at insufficient levels.
Mr. Piot said that failure on the part of some world leaders to recognize the threat of HIV is helping the AIDS epidemic to spread.
More than 14,000 doctors, experts, researchers, and activists are at the week-long meeting that also will focus on ways to slow the spread of the disease and prevent new cases.
While the AIDS epidemic is most acute in Africa, experts say the disease is now spreading fastest in Eastern Europe. They are also concerned about the rise of AIDS cases in India and China, the two most populous countries. Current figures show some 40 million people worldwide suffer from AIDS or HIV.
