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Recognizing that HIV/AIDS is a global challenge and an economic, social and political threat internationally, at Biotrends we have made a commitment to create a comprehensive page on this issue which will become a permanent feature of our magazine. In every issue, we will continue to add more to this section with the latest news on science, medicine, private, governmental and non-governmental efforts for prevention, detection and spread of AIDS/HIV.

In 2004, 3.1 million people died of AIDS. Of these over half a million were children. During the same time in 2004, an estimated 4.9 million people became newly infected with HIV including approximately 640,000 children (Kaiser Family Foundation Report).

The epidemic is one of the fastest growing in the world and is concentrated among young people. Driven initially by injection drug use and increasing heterosexual transmission, HIV prevalence has risen sharply during the last few years. The Russian federation has the largest number of people living with HIV/AIDS in the region (an estimated 860,000) and is considered part of the epidemic's “next wave”.

AIDs is recognized as a major economic burden and challenge to development in many countries. Many countries spend up to 2% of their budget normally spent on economic growth on AIDS/HIV (Kaiser Family Foundation Report: Kaiser Family Foundation Report). This burden is obviously much larger for developing countries which have limited budget and resources as is the case for many Asian and African countries.

In this section we feature many different organizations such as Global Business Coalition which has over 200 members including many multinational companies helping with the anti-AIDS/HIV efforts. We talk about the non-governmental agencies as well as private foundations, and will continue to tell you about great scientific research that has been going on internationally.

• HIV/AIDS : Gaining an Understanding

• HIV/AIDS : Treatments