Their findings were published today in the medical journal, the Lancet. The model, based on a heterosexual type AIDS epidemic like the one in southern Africa suggests that if everyone receives voluntary HIV testing and those who are found to be infected immediately get antiretroviral therapy, regardless of the stage of infection, then within ten years, the rate of new infections will fall by 95%. And within 50 years the proportion of the population living with HIV/AIDS will decline to less than one percent. Dr Kevin De Cock, Director of the HIV/AIDS Department at the World Health Organization stresses that this is just a hypothetical model and WHO is not changing its policy recommendations as a result of it.
"The purpose of it is to contribute [to] and accelerate the debate about the role of antiretroviral therapy in HIV prevention, which is perhaps the most important question facing HIV/AIDS science at this time."
The current WHO policy on treatment involves voluntary testing and evaluation of the clinical stage of the disease in order to determine the eligibility of the patient for treatment with antiretrovirals.
Reporting for UN Radio, I'm Bissera Kostova
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