The National Digest

A Conversation About The World’s Major Health Threats

Dr. Tara Narula, a cardiologist at Manhattan’s Lenox Hill Hospital and a CBS News medical contributor, gave CBS News chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett an update on this week’s episode of “The Takeout” podcast.

Garrett asked Narula about President Trump’s recent prediction that HIV/AIDS would be eradicated within a decade. “Most people have no idea that we’re so close — what’s happening with respect to the eradication of AIDS, which nobody would’ve thought of two years ago. And now we’re really at a point where we can eradicate AIDS from the United States within 10 years,” Mr. Trump said in a cabinet meeting in July.

Narula was less certain than the president. However, she said that while eradication may not be as close as he said it was, there’s some hope that Mr. Trump is right that HIV/AIDS will be wiped out at some point.

“We are a ways away, but we’re inching closer,” Narula said. “I absolutely think it will happen, the question is when.”