The French non-profit Sidaction on Friday launches its three-day annual fundraiser for HIV-Aids research – warning that although treatments have progressed in France, the “fight must go on”. A key challenge is stamping out misconceived ideas of the disease among young people.
Thanks to continuous treatments, people can live with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (Aids) even though a cure still hasn’t been found.
Sidaction president Françoise Barré-Sinoussi – who co-discovered the HIV virus in the early 1980s and won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 2008 – said a collective effort was needed so that ultimate goal remains clear.
Co-founded in 1994 by Pierre Bergé and Line Renaud, Sidaction has been raising money for scientific research in France, and supports around 35 organisations abroad.
Some 200,000 people live with HIV in France, where 5,000 new HIV positive cases were diagnosed in 2022. Fourteen percent were in people aged under 25, while 22 percent were people aged over 50.
Of the total cases, 28 percent were at an advanced stage of the disease.
“Progress still needs to be made for prevention, screening or access to treatments – even in France,” Barré-Sinoussi told French news agency AFP.
Complications for older patients
Although triple therapy treatments make the virus undetectable and prevent its transmission, scientists still don’t know how to eliminate it from the body, she added.
Scientists are working on treatments to allow a long-term remission of virus carriers and to avoid medical complications such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and cancer in people ageing with HIV.
Informing the population also remains crucial to fight recurring misconceptions, Sidaction said.
According to an Ifop survey published at the end of November, prejudice and discrimination are on the rise in France.
For example, 30 percent of people aged 15-24 believe the virus can be transmitted by kissing someone with HIV. That's 15 percent more than in 2015.
“Sexual education in schools does not live up to what the law provides,” Barré-Fitoussi said, referring to a 2001 law that critics say needs to be better implemented.
According to the law, schools are required to organise three annual education sessions on sexuality from primary to high school.
But a report published in July 2021 by the General Inspectorate of Education, Sport and Research (IGESR) revealed that only 20 percent of primary school students and 14 percent of high school students had completed the course.
Sidaction, alongside other non-profit groups, filed a joint legal complaint in 2023, saying the state had failed to meet its obligations.
Tackling sexual violence
For Valérie Bourdin, director of an Aids awareness organisation in Lyon, the fight against sexual violence is a crucial issue and goes hand in hand with the goal of eradicating HIV-Aids.
In 2021 sexual violence increased by 33 percent, Sidaction found, while in 2022 one in five women aged 18 to 24 said they had been raped or sexually assaulted.
Whether it is linked to gender or sexual identity, the more society allows discrimination, the harder the fight against HIV becomes, Bourdin said.
The number of young people admitting to having unprotected sex has gone up, she added.
“That’s why testing for the disease is also extremely important.”
Forty years after its discovery, Aids still scares people – something that can discourage screening.
According to the Ifop survey, 31 percent of 15-24 year olds said they would refuse to talk to those around them about their HIV status. Of those, 41 percent would refuse to do so out of shame.
More than a quarter of young people think that an HIV-positive person on treatment could represent a danger to others.
Fragile progress
The rise of social networks further fuels misinformation Bourdin said, adding that reinforcing education programmes in schools would vastly improve the situation.
While progress has been made in many countries in Africa over the past three decades, the biggest rise in cases has been reported in eastern Europe and central Asia – which have seen a 49 percent spike since 2010.
Barré-Sinoussi said developed countries such as Canada had also seen a rise in HIV infections.
"We must remain vigilant because progress is fragile," she added.
