[Press Kit, International Conference on AIDS (13th : 2000 : Durban, South Africa), compiled by the International AIDS Society]

IAS
INTERNATIONAL
SOCIETY
the results of his mathematical models, suggesting that there is a chance to
eradicate the infection and was appointed man of the year by Time magazine.
During this year, many new antiretroviral drugs entered the market including
nevirapine, the first non nucleoside inhibitor of the reverse transcriptase, and two
new protease inhibitors: indinavir and ritonavir.. The XI International
Conference on AIDS was held in Vancouver and closed providing delegates with
the hope to see a light at the end of the tunnel.
1997 The benefits of new therapeutic approaches were soon clear: quick and firm
decrease of mortality due to AIDS, dramatic reduction of hospitalization.
Enthusiasm and trust were spreading among physicians and people living with
HIV. The game was shifted on the absolute need to facilitate the access to
therapy and drugs to anybody. But that is a problem even for the industrialized
world; people kept dying for AIDS in the south, in spite of the new therapeutic
tools. There were more than 22 million people with HIV/AIDS worldwide. The
research was moving fast and new possible combinations of antiretroviral drugs
were tested, producing promising results.
1998 Several results from clinical trials on combination therapies were showed during
the XII International Conference on AIDS in Geneva. However, investigators
started to observe the first therapeutic failures in patients receiving HAART. Two
issues, that still represent a challenge to meet, emerged from the conference: if
therapy does not swiftly block the viral replication, HIV is able to develop
resistance to drugs and even if there were more available molecules, because of
cross-resistance within the different antiretroviral classes, the chance that the
therapy fails are high, hence the need for salvage strategies; moreover, adherence
to therapy was identified as an issue of paramount importance to the successful
management of the HIV infection. Antiretroviral drugs must be taken by patients
at specific time intervals, some of them must taken together with a large amount
of water and low fat meals while other ones must be taken after a rich fat meal.
Adherence was defined as the Achilles heel of therapy. There was a clear need for
new drugs: more potent, more easily taken, better tolerated. The unquestionable
progresses of the science in the fight of HIV (mortality was halved in the USA)
produced a feeling of AIDS defeat and that the epidemic is blocked but at the
same time increased the sensation of a greater gap between the North and the
South of the world. At least in some countries a certain confusion developed
regarding cases of AIDS, which were decreasing, and number of new infections,
that showed no variation: 5,8 million of new infections were estimated worldwide
just in 1998. The International community was plunged into mourning: Jonathan
Mann died due to a plane crash.