With Nigerian children rated as the most AIDS infected in the world, this news from Malaysia must be good news indeed. AIDS scientists have expressed optimism over their search for a cure for the disease Saturday ahead of a major conference in Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia with more funding and research breakthroughs boosting their hopes. Thousands of delegates will attend the four-day International AIDS Society (IAS) Conference which starts on Sunday in the Malaysian capital, the first time the bi-annual meeting will be held in Asia. Sharon Lewin from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, said funding for cure research had gone from millions to tens of millions of dollars per year.
“I think we are a long way off, but what has changed in the last three years is a realisation, that there needs to be a commitment (to this),” she told AFP in a telephone interview. “In 2010, at that time, very few people really believed it was possible… Between that time and now, there has been a major shift. There’s evidence that things have really been moving.” Deborah Persaud of the US Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore, Maryland, said the case of the “Mississippi baby” that her team worked on presented a “ray of hope”.
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