Politics prevail at 17th International AIDS Conference; epidemic,

The 17th International AIDS Conference which was held in Mexico City, Mexico, August 3-8, assembled 25,000 delegates with a wide range of discussions about the prevalence of the disease, tactics for organizing public health responses and the effectiveness of some institutions in dealing with the issue. An example of the diversity of the event was the viewpoint of the Campaign for Fighting Diseases, a UK-headquartered unit of the development think-tank, the International Policy Network, which took advantage of the Mexico summit to warn about how the use of substandard medicines in developing countries to treat HIV/AIDS could be contributing to increased levels of drug resistance (Marketletter August 11) as well as publish an opinion article calling for the abolition of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

One of the themes under discussion in Mexico City was the debate on whether the number of people afflicted with HIV/AIDS has reached its peak. A statement was issued by the International HIV/AIDS Alliance to coincide with the conference's opening, claiming that "new research is revealing shockingly high rates of HIV among the transgender communities of Latin America and Asia." The group argued that, because of statistical reporting difficulties, transgender people are often not distinguished from homosexual men, masking a growing population segment which is disproportionately affected by the disease. In Argentina, for example, the International HIV/AIDS Alliance stated that 34.4% of transgender people in 2007 were HIV positive, compared with a prevalence among the general population of 0.5% and for homosexual men of 14% in 2001.

Another set of data which caused controversy was released by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The UNAIDS joined activists in protesting the delay by the US agency in publishing revised figures which reveal that previous annual HIV infection rates in the USA of 40,000 per year have been underestimated. Peter Piot, the UNAIDS' executive director, noted that the figure of 56,300 had been known to the US authorities for months, with the Wall Street Journal forecasting an upwards revision as far back as December last year.