Just days before the World AIDS Day on December 1st, the World Health Organization released a study trying to answer a question that has been on scientists’ minds for years: can the AIDS epidemic be stopped? Apparently yes, the study says. Using universal HIV testing and prescribing antiretroviral drugs right after a positive diagnose could slash HIV epidemic.

More exactly, the study found “a 95 percent reduction incidence or new HIV cases in about 10 years time after implementation of the program. Or another way to look at that is that by about 2050, the prevalence of the number of people living with HIV would be less than one percent,” Reuben Granich of the WHO’s Department of HIV/AIDS in Geneva, who was involved in the study, said.

This strategy would cut the estimated number of AIDS deaths between 2008 and 2050 by about half, from about 8.7 million to 3.9 million, leaving only sporadic HIV cases.

But the study raised questions among some of the HIV scientists. One of them was Dr. Geoffrey Garnett from Imperial College London who wrote an accompanying editorial in the journal The Lancet saying the strategy, besides reducing HIV epidemic, “will involve over-testing, over-treatment, side-effects, resistance, and potentially reduced autonomy of the individual in their choices of care.”

According to UNAIDS estimates, there are now 33.2 million people living with HIV, including 2.5 million children. During 2007 some 2.5 million people became newly infected with the virus. Around half of all people who become infected with HIV do so before they are 25 and are killed by AIDS before they are 35.

Around 95 percent of people with HIV/AIDS live in developing nations. But HIV today is a threat to men, women and children on all continents around the world.

Started on December 1st, 1988, World AIDS Day is about raising money, increasing awareness, fighting prejudice and improving education. World AIDS Day is important in reminding people that HIV has not gone away, and that there are many things still to be done.