Anti-retrovirals could halt Aids spread in five years

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"It's time to look beyond that."

He said that if clinical trials started now, all of the HIV positive people in South Africa could be on ARV treatment within five years.

Dr Williams said a few clinical trials were already beginning in the US, Canada and sub-Saharan Africa - and he hoped to have the answer "in one or two years".

Kenneth Mayer, professor of medicine at Brown University in the US state of Rhode Island, agreed that treating patients early with ARVs was a matter of "public health".

The US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is planning a trial in New York and Washington - in districts that have an HIV positive population at a similar level to African epidemics.

"We need to get answers [from these trials] quickly. That will help us move forward," Dr Williams said.

"We could break the back of the epidemic. If we can do it, I'm confident it will work."

But Lisa Power, head of policy at the UK HIV charity the Terrence Higgins Trust, said: "We need to be clear; these proposals would very much slow the spread of HIV in areas with generalised epidemics such as sub-Saharan Africa, but they will not stop it by themselves.

"Alongside testing and treatment, education on safer sex and access to condoms remain crucial if we are to contain the epidemic."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8526690.stm