A New AIDS Plan for Americans, and New Hopes for a Vaccine

13 July 2010

A copy of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy. The plan calls for cutting infections in the United States by 25 percent in five years

This is the VOA Special English Health Report.

Researchers, policy makers and activists are busy preparing for the International AIDS Conference. The next conference begins Sunday in Vienna, Austria.

On Tuesday, the Obama administration announced its National HIV/AIDS Strategy. The plan aims to reduce new HIV infections by twenty-five percent within five years. It also aims to make sure infected patients get treatment more quickly.

President Obama after speaking about the strategy at the White House

HIV is the virus that causes AIDS. The government says sixty-five percent of Americans who discover they are infected get treatment within three months. The new plan calls for increasing that to eighty-five percent.

Thirty million dollars from the health care reform law is to go to support prevention activities, including expanded HIV testing.

Over one million Americans are living with the virus, out of an estimated thirty-three million people worldwide.

Last week, government scientists in the United States announced the discovery of two antibodies that raise hopes for an AIDS vaccine. They say these antibodies can stop more than ninety percent of all known strains of HIV. Antibodies are proteins that the body makes to help protect itself against infection.