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Topic: Aids epidemic spreading faster than ever, report warns
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Kindgo
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Report: 40 million living with AIDS
From the Science & Technology Desk
Published 7/2/2002 5:22 PM
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NEW YORK, July 2 (UPI) -- United Nations officials predicted Tuesday that by the year 2020, as many as 68 million people will die from AIDS in the 45 most affected nations -- five times the number of people already killed by the worldwide epidemic.
Twenty years since it was first identified as a health threat, doctors said the epidemic -- despite already killing 13 million people and infecting an additional 40 million men, women and children -- is still in its early stages.
"Effective responses to this epidemic are possible," said Dr. Pete Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, the Joint United National Programme on HIV/AIDS, "but only when they are politically backed and full scale, and that unless more is done today and tomorrow, the epidemic will continue to grow."
The report -- a litany of bad news -- describes the extent of infection with the human immunodeficiency virus, the retrovirus that causes AIDS:
--In southern Africa, about 40 percent of pregnant women are infected with HIV. Neff Walker, senior epidemiologist for UNAIDS, told UPI "Our previous estimates were off by 30 to 50 percent. We thought that the epidemic in parts of Southern Africa had peaked, but it didn't turn out that way." He said the epidemic continues to grow and continues to confound the best estimates of researchers.
--In Botswana, where 36 percent of adults were infected with HIV two years ago, the rate rose to 39 percent in 2001. About 60 percent of women 25-29 years old are infected in Gaberone, the capital city.
--In West Africa, an apparent stability in the prevalence of HIV infection has turned around -- in the wrong direction. In Cameroon, the rate, which remained around 5 percent from 1988 to 1996, is now approaching 12 percent.
--Belief that major Asian populations would be free of the epidemic have been shattered with rising infection rates in Indonesia and China.
--Hopes that the epidemic would be confined to marginalized segments of the drug injecting populations of Eastern Europe and Central Asia have proved illusory as the epidemic is spreading into heterosexual populations.
Piot said that in 2001, UNAIDS estimated 5 million people were newly infected with HIV -- including 2 million women and 800,000 children under the age of 15. He said the number of people living with HIV/AIDS today includes 37.1 million adults and 3 million children. In 2001, 3 million people -- including 580,000 children -- died of the disease. The disease has left 14 million children as orphans -- having lost at least one parent to AIDS.
Even in the United States and Western Europe, officials continue to be concerned about the epidemic. "In high-income countries," Piot said, "where reduced AIDS mortality has made headlines in recent years, increases in unsafe sex and in HIV infections have crept up almost unnoticed."
In these countries, drugs to treat the disease -- but not cure it -- are generally available. But in the developing world, where 90 percent of the HIV infected people live, only 4 percent have access to the drugs, reported Hein Marais and Andrew Wilson, authors of the 225-page document, released just prior to the 14th World AIDS Conference, which begins in Barcelona, Spain, next week.
"While inaction has proved to be a deadly mistake, the evidence has never been stronger that action against AIDS gets positive results," Piot said.
Not all the news is grim, however. The authors cited some success stories:
--The establishment of a program to provide anti-retroviral medications in Brazil has reduced AIDS deaths to one-third of the rate in 1996 and similarly has reduced health care costs. Also, new infections have decreased in South America's largest nation.
--In Zambia, prevention programs have resulted in a fall of HIV infections among pregnant urban women from 28.4 percent in 1993 to less than 15 percent in 1998.
--In Cambodia, a prevention and education campaign resulted in a reduction of 33 percent among pregnant women between 1997 and 2000.
--In Uganda, which once had double-digit infection rates, government programs and citizen action continue to show the disease may be controlled. Infection rates of 8.3 percent in 1999 have continued to fall to less than 5 percent in 2001.
Despite these advances, Piot said, "The unprecedented destruction wrought by the HIV/AIDS epidemic over the past 20 years will multiply several times in the decades to come unless the fight against this disease is dramatically expanded."
Piot urged nations with accelerating epidemics to move quickly to adopt proven strategies from the countries that have succeeded in turning the epidemic around.
"One reason we have had such a large epidemic has to be the lack of political leadership," he commented. Although there are signs this is changing, Piot said he was disappointed in the recent G8 summit, involving the major economic powers, because no real commitment was made to attack the epidemic.
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God bless,
Kindgo
Inside the will of God there is no failure. Outside the will of God there is no success.
Posts: 4320 | From: Sunny Florida | Registered: Jun 2002
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Kindgo
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Member # 2
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Aids epidemic spreading faster than ever, report warns
The HIV/Aids epidemic is spreading faster than previously believed possible, health experts warn.
A report says it will kill 68 million people worldwide in the next two decades.
It is continuing to spread rapidly into new populations in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Eastern Europe - yet only 4% of patients in developing countries have access to effective treatment.
The situation is now so serious in parts of Africa that nearly four in 10 adults in Botswana and a third of Zimbabwean adults are HIV-positive.
Scientists at the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids predict 68 million people will die because of Aids in the 45 most affected countries between 2000 and 2020.
This is more than five times the 13 million deaths in these countries over the past two decades. Half of the new mothers in some southern African countries could die of Aids, it is feared.
The report, presented to the XIVth International Aids Conference in Barcelona, warns that, far from the epidemic being brought under control, it is still at "an early stage".
"The unprecedented destruction wrought by the HIV/Aids epidemic over the past 20 years will multiply several times in the decades to come unless the fight against this disease is dramatically expanded," said one of the authors, Dr Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS.
Almost 12 million young people are now living with HIV and about 6,000 more become infected every day.
quote:
It is continuing to spread rapidly into new populations in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Eastern Europe - yet only 4% of patients in developing countries have access to effective treatment.
![[fie]](graemlins/fie.gif) ![[crying]](graemlins/crying.gif) ![[uhoh]](graemlins/uhoh2.gif)
Yet 100% have access to preventative measure such as stopping homosexual sex, sex with multiple partners, and the sharing of needles.
How sad.
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God bless,
Kindgo
Inside the will of God there is no failure. Outside the will of God there is no success.
Posts: 4320 | From: Sunny Florida | Registered: Jun 2002
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