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

IAS
INTERNATIONAL
SOCIETY
1999 Further new antiretrovirals are added to the therapeutic armamentarium: abacavir
(an inhibitor of reverse transcriptase),nelfinavir (a protease inhibitor) and two
non nucleoside inhibitors of reverse transcriptase: delevirdine and efavirenz. The
FDA granted the accelerated approval process to amprenavir, a new protease
inhibitor, and several new drugs were under development. There were 10 new
HIV infections any minute worldwide. The HIVNET 012 trial showed the
efficacy of nevirapine in the prevention of mother to child transmission of the
infection: the transmission rates were halved in spite of all the patients enrolled in
the study breast fed their babies; such results were obtained giving the mother a
single pill during labor and one dose of syrup to the newborn: the cost of such a
treatment is just 4 $US.. For the first time, an affordable therapy is developed and
could be used in the worst affected countries.
In September, the International AIDS Society (IAS) organized the first Rome
State-of-the Art Conference on Treatment of HIV Infection e launched the
continuing medical education project named Share: everyone is called to
concentrate the efforts on reducing the gap between North and South of the
world, to start the AIDS defeat.
In November, Tabo Mbeki, President of South Africa, the country that will host
the next International Conference on AIDS, claimed the African right to
articulate its own response to AIDS in various official occasions; he joined the
thesis of the so called "dissidents", a group of scientists headed by Peter
Duesberg, who thought that HIV is not the cause of AIDS which would be due
to antiretroviral drugs (leaded by AZT) that are considered toxic and dangerous.
It should be underlined that the pregnant women in South Africa are not offered
antiretroviral drugs to prevent the mother to child transmission of the infection.
During the same period of time, it was announced that about 8% of South
African population is HIV seropositive an 3,6 million people are living with
AIDS. Such figures put South Africa at the top of the worst affected countries in
the world by the HIV infection. Mbeki's attitude had been poorly considered by
the public opinion worldwide but fueled again the "dissident" hypothesis and run
the risk to slow down the needed interventions to face the AIDS pandemic in
Africa.
At the end of December, the UNAIDS reported its update on the epidemic: 5,6
million of new infections in 1999 with 33,6 million people living with HIV/AIDS
worldwide. Since the beginning of the epidemic there had been 16,3 million
deaths.
2000 The debate on AIDS concentrates on the geo-political dimension of the
pandemic, as a sort of preparation to the Internal Conference on AIDS. South
Africa is so insisting on its dissident attitude towards worldwide shared scientific

opinions to gather a panel of experts that includes different kind of researchers.
Scientists who clearly showed, through their own work, that HIV is the cause of
AIDS and that the combination therapy is able to control the viral replication to