On this day in 1986, The World Health Organization (WHO) announced today that it had begun the first coordinated global effort to combat AIDS, a disease it described as ''a health disaster of pandemic proportions.''
The organization is elevating the fight against acquired immune deficiency syndrome to a status equivalent to its programmes to combat entire groups of tropical diseases and to promote childhood immunizations, Dr Halfdan Mahler, head of the WHO, said at a news conference that an agency of the United Nations that is based in Geneva, was also giving the AIDS effort the kind of backing it gave to the eradication of smallpox. He said the organization hoped to be raising $1.5 billion a year by the 1990's for the fight against AIDS.
''We're running scared,'' said Dr Mahler. He said he could ''not imagine a worse health problem in this century. 100,000 people have come down with AIDS, according to reports by governments and extrapolations by W.H.O. One million people have AIDS-related disorders, he said, and up to 10 million are infected with the AIDS virus and are presumably capable of spreading the disease.”
Dr Mahler said that AIDS was ''knocking unpleasantly on the doors of Asia'' and that if it became a major problem there, the estimate of potential spread could rise.
In the United States, the Public Health Service has predicted a total of 270,000 AIDS cases by the end of 1991, including 179,000 deaths. Scientists now estimate that for those who do come down with AIDS itself, the average lag time between infection with the virus and diagnosis of the disease may be five years or more.
The new WHO programme, in which Dr Mann is being assisted by three epidemiologists, has begun with contributions totaling $5 million from the Governments of the United States, Sweden, Norway and England. The organization has also received pledges from Switzerland and Denmark.
Another widespread disease, tuberculosis, is estimated by the World Health Organization to have 10 million new cases each year. Dr. Dixie Snider, a tuberculosis expert at the Federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, said that up to 20 million people were sick with tuberculosis at any time.
A distinction between TB and AIDS, however, is that in many cases antibiotics can cure TB, while AIDS has no cure. TB can be fatal if not treated. —New York Times
