It has been 20 years since the first World AIDS Day drew attention to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Today, with some 33 million people living with HIV, World AIDS Day and events like the International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa, taking place in Senegal, December 3-7, remain “extraordinarily important for those who are trying to fight AIDS in this world,” says Shanta Devarajan, Chief Economist for the World Bank’s Africa region.

AIDS is increasingly seen as not only a health problem, but society’s problem, says Devarajan. “We need all the resources and all the mechanisms that we have in society to fight AIDS.”

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Yes, the economy is bad, and yes we have a new president, but South Florida can't forget it is a national epicenter for HIV/AIDS, said organizers of World AIDS Day events starting today.

Activists will preach the messages of safe sex, getting tested and staying vigilant during a series of rallies, marches and health fairs related to the 20th annual AIDS Day observance Monday.

"People's minds are on other places and things right now. This is a way to bring it back to the AIDS epidemic," said Terry DeCarlo, a spokesman for the Broward House nonprofit service agency and organizer of a candlelight walk in Wilton Manors.

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The virus that causes AIDS could theoretically be eliminated in a decade if all people living in countries with high infection rates are regularly tested and treated, according to a new mathematical model.

It is an intriguing solution to end the AIDS epidemic. But it is based on assumptions rather than data, and is riddled with logistical problems. The research was published online Tuesday in the medical journal The Lancet.

"It's quite a startling result," said Charlie Gilks, an AIDS treatment expert at the World Health Organization and one of the paper's authors. "In a relatively short amount of time, we could potentially knock the epidemic on its head."

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An American man who suffered from AIDS appears to have been cured of the disease 20 months after receiving a targeted bone marrow transplant normally used to fight leukemia, his doctors said.

While researchers — and the doctors themselves — caution that the case might be no more than a fluke, others say it may inspire a greater interest in gene therapy to fight the disease that claims 2 million lives each year. The virus has infected 33 million people worldwide.

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The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday OK’d a bill, already passed by the House, that would require HIV testing for all inmates upon arrival in federal prisons.

The bill would require HIV antibody testing and counseling for all incoming inmates and follow-up testing to be available annually. Prisoners potentially exposed to HIV while incarcerated could request follow-up testing and counseling at any time.

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The AIDS virus is especially hard to fight because few people develop antibodies to neutralize it, but U.S. researchers said on Thursday they have found an immunity gene that may offer a new way to fight back.

They said the gene Apobec3 helps mice develop antibodies against an HIV-like virus, and they think the same gene in humans could lead to a potent vaccine against the human immunodeficiency virus or HIV.

"This gene is central to HIV biology," Dr. Warner Greene of the Gladstone Institutes at the University of California, San Francisco, said in a telephone interview.

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