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HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES
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| Jim Yong Kim says that the AIDS epidemic is so devastating and so complex, involving many aspects of public health, that a broad scheme to attack it will force the development of a public health infrastructure that can have far-reaching effects for those afflicted with other diseases as well. (Photo by Suzanne Camarata) |
Broad vision required to fight HIV
Harvard Medical School's Kim urges more rethinking of health, human rights policies
Harvard News Office
A major new public health campaign focused on AIDS is needed in the wake of the World Health Organization's "3 by 5" campaign, which forced a new approach to fight the deadly disease, according to a former WHO official instrumental in the 3 by 5 program.
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View the archived webcast of Kim's talk |
Jim Yong Kim, a Harvard Medical School associate professor who now heads Brigham and Women's Hospital's Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities, said the adoption of the 3 by 5 program in 2003 by WHO and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) shifted the emphasis from AIDS prevention to a massive program to treat 3 million people with powerful anti-retroviral drugs by the end of 2005.
The ambitious goal forced a shakeup of the normal way of doing business with regard to AIDS, Kim said, and prompted a host of criticism from those who thought the program misguided or too ambitious.
But Kim, who spoke at the Harvard School of Public Health's Snyder Auditorium on March 2, said it's OK to set lofty goals even if they are ultimately not met because much good can be achieved along the way.
"We needed a goal that changed the way we worked next week and next month, and for some reason this did it," Kim said.
Kim's talk, "Rethinking Health and Human Rights in the Age of Universal Access to HIV Treatment, Care and Prevention," was part of the ongoing Dean's Distinguished Lecture Series at the Harvard School of Public Health.
School of Public Health Dean Barry Bloom introduced Kim to a packed auditorium. Bloom said Kim, who won a 2003 MacArthur Foundation "genius" fellowship, was instrumental in pushing the 3 by 5 program through when he worked as the head of WHO's infectious disease unit.
Kim said that it's apparent now that the 3 by 5 program didn't achieve its goals, but that doesn't negate the good it did. Last year, for the first time, he said, the world saw some benefit from treating AIDS in statistical data. Even so, he said, the high prevalence of the disease in some countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, means that another campaign with equally lofty goals is needed.
Kim said a recent call for universal access to anti-retroviral treatment to all who need it by 2010 is an attractive goal. The AIDS epidemic is so devastating and so complex, involving many aspects of public health, that a broad scheme to attack it will force the development of a public health infrastructure that can have far-reaching effects for those afflicted with other diseases as well.
Further, he said, AIDS activists are organized and effective in holding governments to their promises like no other disease advocacy group has been.
"I would argue that HIV can be the battle horse for other diseases and conditions," Kim said. "We cannot FedEx drugs in, we have to build systems."
The devastation being wrought by AIDS demands that dramatic action be taken, Kim said. Some African countries have lost 20 years in life expectancy since 1990, and the disease threatens entire groups of people with extinction.
"We must bring a sense of urgency to all of our work that matches the devastation of the epidemic we face," Kim said. "We simply cannot wait, we must act."
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