AIDS and the challenge of good news

AIDS has ravaged the gay community for over 26 years, and we have learned a great deal about how to survive this insidious killer. Our AIDS organizations have preached safer sex practices, and our scientists have developed new drugs that slow down the progression of the disease. But one lesson that we seem to relearn every few years is that if we don't take care of ourselves, there is not anyone else who readily will.
In the 1990s, many AIDS organizations saw growth and huge funding increases, and the rates of new infections finally began to drop in the United States. But after George W. Bush became president in 2000, the AIDS service community had to deal with ridiculous diversions such as "abstinence only" and "faith based funding" that drained precious resources away from agencies that had proven track records in effectively educating people to protect themselves from infection.
Now we face another challenge – one that comes in the form of "Good News." It seems that AIDS is finally starting to burn itself out. Like other pestilences, the AIDS pandemic appears to have its own life cycle, and it is starting to wane. New infections reached a peak in the late 1990s, and now have stabilized – at an enormous number, but at least new infection rates are no longer increasing at exponential rates.
The United Nations' AIDS-fighting agency and the World Health Organization reduced their estimates of the number of people infected with the virus. As a result of improved methodologies, better surveillance and new understanding of the dynamics of the epidemic, they sharply reduced their estimate, to 33.2 million worldwide from 39.5 million. They now peg the number of new infections per year at 2.5 million, much lower than past estimates. But even with the revised estimates, the AIDS epidemic remains one of the world's greatest plagues, requiring a strong campaign to bring it under control.
With the peak in new infections in the late 1990s, the number of people dying from AIDS-related illnesses has declined in the last two years, in part thanks to life-prolonging drug treatments. Officials also credit some of the decrease to a reduction in risky sexual practices in some regions of the world. We are thankful for this.
But we should not be lulled into thinking it is almost over. The number of people living with AIDS infections is still rising, just more slowly. Over two million people, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, still die from the disease each year, and eight countries in southern Africa have more than 15 percent of their populations infected, a devastating blow to their societies and economies. The revised numbers cannot be used as an excuse to relax the campaign against AIDS.
Stay vigilant. Stay safe. Don't let your guard down now, just because the numbers show a dip. The AIDS pandemic is waiting for us to relax, and if we do, it could still bounce back, perhaps in an even more virulent form. Let us not give AIDS any chance to rebound. Let's keep fighting AIDS until it is just a distant, tragic memory.
This World AIDS Day get yourself tested – and encourage everyone you know to do the same.