Word: piot
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...disease. In Africa, India, Thailand and to a growing extent Central and Eastern Europe, the treatment's price tag of up to $20,000 a year puts it way beyond the grasp of all but the superrich. "With this discovery, the AIDS gap only becomes wider," laments Dr. Peter Piot, executive director of the U.N.'s AIDS program. To most AIDS researchers, it has become painfully obvious that drugs of any kind, no matter how effective, are not the solution to the world's deadliest epidemic. But a vaccine, which would address the problem, is not a top priority...
That is because those pushing hardest for AIDS research are Westerners who already have HIV, says the U.N.'s Piot. "Their primary concern is to find a cure," he says. "The same pressure hasn't been there for healthy people from the developing world." Private drug companies, for their part, have been disinclined to spend heavily on vaccine development because vaccines are generally less profitable. Piot explains, "In most countries, vaccines are purchased by governments, not by individuals. Taxpayers are footing the bill, which keeps prices down." The same is not true of therapeutics. According to a report...
That means that most people, especially those outside Zaire, have little to fear from Ebola. Says Dr. Peter Piot, who investigated the first Ebola outbreak in 1976 and heads the United Nations aids program: "It's theoretically feasible that an infected person from Kikwit could go to Kinshasa, get on a plane to New York, fall ill, and present a transmission risk there. But even if this were to happen, it would likely stop there...
...through sex with multiple partners. Surveys of African AIDS patients in Rwanda and Belgium found they had had an average of 32 sex partners. Huge reservoirs of infection exist along trade routes connecting the hard-hit countries of the AIDS belt. "In the epicenter," says Belgian Microbiologist Peter Piot, "15% to 25% of the adult population is affected. That's really mind blowing...
...signs of trouble ahead. Most of the victims are young people between the ages of 19 and 40. African governments are therefore bracing for the loss of many of their best and brightest. "I believe that AIDS will have a major impact on the development of Africa," says Microbiologist Piot. "The ones who are dying are the young adults in whom governments have invested the most in terms of education...