|
"HIV cases surge to record 40 million"
The
Star (www.thestar.com.my)
(22/11/05)
NEW DELHI: Progress has been made in tackling HIV infection in key African
countries, but five million people were infected across the world this year
taking the total beyond a record 40 million, a UN report said.
The grim AIDS epidemic claimed 3.1 million lives during the year, more than
half a million of them children.
“The total number of people living with the human immunodeficiency virus
(HIV) reached its highest level, an estimated 40.3 million” up from 37.5
million in 2003, said the AIDS Epidemic Update 2005, released here
yesterday.
The report that came ahead of World AIDS Day on Dec 1 noted that “the
overall number of people living with HIV continued to increase worldwide
except the Caribbean.”
“There were an additional five million new infections in 2005,” it said.
The survey warned that growing epidemics were under way in eastern Europe,
Central Asia and east Asia and that the spread of HIV/AIDS was intensifying
in southern Africa.
Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 64% of the new infections taking the number
cases there to an estimated 25.8 million.
“HIV stigma and the resulting actual or feared discrimination have proven to
be perhaps the most difficult obstacles to effective HIV prevention,” the
report said, and these factors “created an ideal climate” for the spread of
the epidemic.
Only “one in 10 Africans and one in seven Asians in need of anti-retrovirals
were receiving it in mid-2005.”
But in some parts of Africa there were “hopeful signs” of declining national
HIV prevalence. “Infection levels were dropping” in Zimbabwe, Uganda and
Kenya, it said.
“There is ample evidence that HIV does yield to determined and concerted
interventions,” said a statement by UNAIDS programme executive director
Peter Piot.
“But the reality is that the AIDS epidemic continues to outstrip global and
national efforts to contain it. It is clear that a rapid increase in the
scale and scope of HIV prevention programmes is urgently needed,” he said.
In Asia, which has 8.3 million cases, the epidemic was propelled by
injecting drug use and commercial sex.
Drugs, sex work and weak surveillance of vulnerable groups were fuelling the
HIV epidemic in Latin America and Eastern Europe as well as Asia. — AFP
 Back to
News Page
|
