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International AIDS Conference and the AIDS Transition

7/16/12

Mead Over

Next week the International AIDS Conference will be held in the United States for the first time in 20 years.  CGD senior fellow Mead Over, one of the world’s leading experts on the economics of the epidemic, and policy outreach associate Jenny Ottenhoff join me this week to discuss the state of the epidemic, budget austerity, and the US role in the global response.

First I ask Jenny how it happens that the United States—the primary funder in the global fight against HIV/AIDS – has not hosted the conference for two decades.

Achieving an AIDS Transition - Mead Over

11/8/11

My guest this week is Mead Over, one of the world’s leading experts on the global response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. We discuss his new book, Achieving an Aids Transition: Preventing Infections to Sustain Treatment. The key idea is simple but powerful. Mead argues that, instead of reaching vainly for the unsustainable goal of offering treatment to everyone in the developing world who needs it, donor policy should aim to sustain current treatment levels while reducing the number of new infections below the number of AIDS deaths, so that the total number of people with HIV/AIDS declines.

Turning the Tide Through Better Prevention: Mead Over on the AIDS Transition

5/25/10

Mead OverEven as the cost of treating HIV/AIDS has fallen dramatically, the number of people newly infected has remained high. What can be done to reverse this trend and finally defeat this disease? This week on the Wonkcast, I’m joined by Mead Over, a senior fellow here at the Center for Global Development and perhaps the world’s leading expert on the economics of HIV/AIDS. He has recently published two major essays, which introduce the concept of the “AIDS transition”—the point in time where the number of people living with the disease begins to fall. He argues persuasively that to reach this point, international donors must greatly strengthen incentives for effective prevention.

“We should be very proud of the accomplishment in bringing down the numbers of AIDS deaths,” says Mead. “But the number of new infections… has not fallen enough. And so the result is we have a new take-off in the numbers of people living with AIDS.” Since 1997, he says, the number of HIV-infected people has increased by 50%, rising from around 22 million in 1997 to 33 million today.

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