Yet if ARVs were used as preventatives, these people, too, would need to take them.
Soon, more people will be put on ARVs each year than die of the disease.
The crucial trick with ARVs is to use several different treatments simultaneously, an approach known as combination therapy.
Anti-retrovirals, or ARVs, as the drugs used to treat AIDS are known, work by stopping HIV from breeding.
And for those who did the ARVs would have to be paid for.
ECONOMIST: The 19th International AIDS Conference: Looking into the future | The
Another study, published this July, showed that giving ARVs to the uninfected partner reduces their chances of becoming infected by 75%.
Dr Hussein Mwinyi has suspended three top officials and stopped local production of the anti-retrovirals (ARVs) while the probe takes place.
If found to be infected, they would be put immediately onto a course of what are known as first-line antiretroviral drugs (ARVs).
Many patients were too late in taking up ARVs in the first place and died within a few months of commencing treatment.
Boston University's Dr Christopher Gill says in many cases, taking the ARVs may take a back seat to more pressing daily needs.
Treatment-as-prevention raises questions about how ARVs should be used in the future.
ECONOMIST: The 19th International AIDS Conference: Looking into the future | The
One technique, treatment-as-prevention, relies on the fact that ARVs themselves suppress transmission.
ECONOMIST: The 19th International AIDS Conference: Looking into the future | The
For the 3% or so of people per year for whom the first-line ARVs do not work, more expensive second-line treatments would be used.
The second approach uses ARVs to stop one very specific form of transmission: that between an infected mother and her child at birth, or during suckling.
There was also evidence, the researchers say, of patients discontinuing treatment because of the cost of the drugs in those cases where patients were charged for their ARVs.
The intention is to make ARVs available to everyone who needs them, in rich and poor countries alike, by buying the drugs cheaply and building the infrastructure of doctors, nurses and clinics to prescribe and provide them.
This trial will not report for seven years, but Dr Montaner hopes the mere likelihood that treatment also prevents transmission will spur governments to redouble their efforts to roll out ARVs and thus obtain a prevention programme at no additional cost.
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