Shouldn't this be more of a temporary problem? As soon as there is a vaccine its patents will expire at least 20 years afterwards. And then lots of much cheaper vaccines will flood the market.
I think his point is that much of the problem of preventing the spread of HIV has less to do with the science of killing the virus, and more to do with the difficulty of actually getting it in the hands of people who need it. There are already very cheap, readily-available ways of preventing HIV transmission (condom use comes to mind), but people aren't using those. The reasons are varied, but some cite misinformation, cultural misconceptions, government ineptitude, and so on. Even if there were a 99% effective HIV vaccine that were as cheap as water, it still wouldn't make it into the hands of every person in the developing world. Proof of that is the fact that we can't even get water to all of these people.
Proof of that is the fact that we can't even get water to all of these people.
Not sure how good an analogy this is. I suspect it would be moderately expensive (i.e. on the order of a few billion dollars), but possible to deliver a liter of clean water to nearly everyone in the developing world. The problem is, that solves their water problem for about 12 hours, if you're being generous. Solving their problem long term is the hard part. With vaccines, you only need to visit the people a finite number of times, and then you're done. Given that HIV is sexually transmitted (and assuming that the vaccine can be given relatively young), you wouldn't even need especially frequent visits to immunize the next generation of people.
I think his point is that much of the problem of preventing the spread of HIV has less to do with the science of killing the virus, and more to do with the difficulty of actually getting it in the hands of people who need it. There are already very cheap, readily-available ways of preventing HIV transmission (condom use comes to mind), but people aren't using those. The reasons are varied, but some cite misinformation, cultural misconceptions, government ineptitude, and so on. Even if there were a 99% effective HIV vaccine that were as cheap as water, it still wouldn't make it into the hands of every person in the developing world. Proof of that is the fact that we can't even get water to all of these people.