“Are global health policies and funding adequately looking to the future rather than focusing solely on problems of the present?” This is the critical question raised by two stalwart global health leaders in a provocative article published this week in the esteemed journal AIDS.
In their commentary, “Invisible, but not absent,” Kevin De Cock, MD, FRCP (UK), DTM&H, and PRI Co-Lead Wafaa El-Sadr, MD, MPH, MPA team up to connect the dots between the long-running global HIV response and the changing landscape of health threats now facing populations around the world.
De Cock, who has held numerous leadership positions at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization
(WHO), and El-Sadr, founder and director of ICAP and executive vice president of Columbia Global, together claim a wealth of insight into the dynamic health challenges facing the world today.
Revisiting the origins of the global AIDS response in the 1980s, the authors consider two decades of progress highlighted by the scale-up
of HIV treatment and prevention while acknowledging a number of significant obstacles in the path forward — especially in Africa — including widespread discrimination of drug use, sex work, and same sex relations, insufficient epidemiological data, and challenges
in reaching the undiagnosed. “Bluntly, the most important future indicator of Africa’s commitment to combatting AIDS will be how it treats its vulnerable populations, especially sexual minorities,” they write.
Expanding their scope, the authors go on to look at Ebola and COVID-19 and the tolls they have taken, “stark reminders of the need to invest more in infection prevention and control in healthcare settings worldwide.” From there,
they scan through a range of factors that define the shifting global health terrain, including conflict, climate change, and migration — all of which inform an emerging new vision of global health — “one of true health equity that addresses unfinished business
such as HIV, assures health security, and recognizes the actual current burden of disease, including noncommunicable diseases and migrant health.”
This is highly recommended reading for everyone seeking deeper understanding of the health challenges facing the global community today.
Read the commentary at AIDS online (subscription required)