HIV/AIDS Conference to Explore “Hard Times, Hard Choices”

On a world scale, the pandemic of HIV/AIDS is seen as still being in its infancy. Yet, since first recognized 20 years ago, the disease has infected 60 million people and 25 million have died. And the problem is intensifying.

HIV/AIDS Explosion Feared
Within the next 20 years the incidence of HIV/AIDS is projected to explode worldwide. Today, nearly 9,000 people die each day from HIV. According to the National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, millions more will become infected in nations such as India, China, the former Soviet republics, and the populous African nations of Nigeria and Ethiopia.

In the United States and Western Europe, sexually transmitted diseases have risen to the highest levels in 10 years -- a worrisome indicator of renewed risk of HIV infection.

The STD increase reflects flagging interest in safe sex messages and behavior. Women infected with HIV are shown to retain high concentrations of the virus in the vaginal tract, even when HAART therapy induces nondetectable levels of HIV in their blood. Drug therapies are losing effectiveness for many with HIV as virus strains recombine and drug resistance develops.

Funding Falls Behind
Funding for research, treatment, and prevention programs is not keeping pace with need. Difficult economic times are forcing cutbacks in government and private funding.

- Stanley Slotnick, Lemuel Shattuck Hospital
- Loretta McLaughlin, Harvard AIDS Institute

HIV/AIDS: Hard Times, Hard Choices

Jointly sponsored by Tufts University School of Medicine and Lemuel Shattuck Hospital, in collaboration with the Massachusetts Medical Society, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, and the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum

April 10, 2002
John F. Kennedy Library
Columbia Point, Boston
8 a.m. - 4 p.m.

Topics include:

• International HIV/AIDS updates focusing on the work of New England-based organizations



• The economic dilemma: The impact of lost resources and implications for affected populations



• Treatment dilemmas of hepatitis C, HIV coinfection in high-risk populations

With speakers from:

Harvard AIDS Institute, Tufts University School of Medicine, Massachusetts Department of Public Health, Heller School for Social Policy, and Albany Medical Center

For more information, contact the Lemuel Shattuck Hospital at (617) 971-3396.