Expert says AIDS will become top killer is something isn’t done

An expert says AIDS will be the world’s top killer by 2010 if something doesn’t change. Speaking today at U-N-I’s annual symposium on international health, Josh Ruxin said one of myths surrounding HIV and AIDS is that we’re making progress. He says rhetoric from the U-N and our government gives the impression that despite 42-million HIV-positive worldwide most of them can be saved. Ruxin is coordinator of the U-N Millennium Project Task Force Against HIV/AIDS and says another myth is that H-I-V and AIDS can be tackled alone. He says though it’s one particular health problem, it reflects failures in the entire health system. Ruxin says little has been done to scale up healthcare systems in the last two decades, and a lot more has to be done to stem the worldwide epidemic. You have to educate, he says, as well as implement prevention, improve hospitals, empower women and now care for tens of millions of children orphaned by AIDS. Ruxin says another wave of the AIDS epidemic is beginning to hit countries like India, China, Nigeria and Ethiopia. He says there are three-million new infections each year but that will increase to five or six million a year by 2010 if more isn’t done. UNI’s Global Health Corps sponsors the annual symposium on international health.