In a speech at the National Institutes of Health today, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it is time for the world to “usher in an AIDS-free generation,” calling it a new “policy priority” for the U.S.
Clinton said scientific advances have made it possible to strive for a generation in which “virtually no children” are born with HIV. She added that a “wide range of prevention tools” can help prevent the spread of the virus and that access to treatment can prevent people who are HIV-positive from passing the virus on to others.
Flickr, Gobierno de Guatemala
“Now, HIV may be with us well into the future. But the disease that it causes need not be. This is, I admit, an ambitious goal, and I recognize I am not the first person to envision it,” Clinton said, according to a transcript of today’s speech, which was described by the State Department as the first in a series of remarks from Obama administration officials leading up to World AIDS Day.
“Now we know beyond a doubt if we take a comprehensive view of our approach to the pandemic, treatment doesn’t take away from prevention. It adds to prevention,” Clinton said. “So let’s end the old debate over treatment versus prevention and embrace treatment as prevention,” she added. Continue reading
