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