Kathleen Kennedy Townsend: Why HIV Treatment Needs 10 Times Its Current Funding

Among her many civic and philanthropic roles, contributing RP Kathleen Kennedy Townsend sevres as Chair of  the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Institute of Human Virology, founded by well-known AIDS researcher Dr. Robert C. Gallo. In recent weeks, the Institute received $23 million in new funding for an HIV/AIDS vaccine from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the U.S. Army, and other organizations.

Still, Townsend argues, the need for research dollars is far, far greater.  As she wrote for Atlantic magazine online:

While researchers are still struggling to develop a preventive vaccine, the treatment of HIV/AIDS has drastically changed. For most of the developed world, HIV/AIDS has been transformed from a death sentence to a chronic disease.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the case in the developing world, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where millions don’t have access to life-saving drugs. For them the death sentence has not been commuted.

Read the rest of Townsend’s essay here.