Countries around the globe will mark World AIDS Day this weekend. The toll of the disease is still enormous. More than 30 million have died since the epidemic broke out. And AIDS accounted for 1.7 million deaths last year.But there is growing optimism about curbing and perhaps ending the epidemic for the next generation, even as daunting hurdles remain. Ray Suarez has the story.The numbers are still staggering. Some number 34 million are live well HIV, almost 5 million more than a decade ago. The U.S. substantially increased its commitment to fighting AIDS under President George W. Bush.Yesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton unveiled the Obama administration's road map to increase access to treatment and eliminate new infections in children by 2015.So, as we continue to drive down the number of new infections and drive up the number of people on treatment, eventually, we will be able to treat more people than become infected every year. That will be the tipping point. We will then get ahead of the pandemic and an AIDS-free generation will be in our sight.It's been more than 30 years since the first known AIDS cases appeared in 1981. In the early years, contracting AIDS was a near-certain death sentence.There are few scarier things than the discovery of a new killer disease, one medical science admits is mostly a mystery for which there is no certain cause or cure. Doctors have called the new one bizarre, frustrating, frightening.
