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WORLD AIDS DAY: RATE OF INFECTIONS DECLINING BUT 33 MILLION CONTINUE TO LIVE WITH HIV

AIDS

DAVID ADAMS reports..

An estimated 33 million people continue to live with HIV worldwide yet while 2.7 million people were newly infected in 2008, the number of people being infected each year is declining.

Such are the findings of the 2009 UNAIDS Outlook report, launched last week. It showed that the number of new HIV infections has been reduced by 17 per cent over the last eight years.

AIDS

PICTURE: David Dallaqua (www.sxc.hu)

 

“For every two people put on treatment, five are newly infected. Too often prevention programmes are not reaching those most in need.”

– Michel Sidibé, executive director of UNAIDS

The decline is most dramatic in East Asia where new infections has dropped by 25 per cent since 2001 followed by 15 per cent – or about 400,000 new infections – in sub-Saharan Africa – where some 22 million people live with AIDS – and 10 per cent in South East Asia.

In a statement released for World AIDS Day, Michel Sidibé, executive director of international organisation UNAIDS, joined with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in calling for an end to discrimination and criminalisation of people affected by HIV and for greater action in HIV prevention.

“For every two people put on treatment, five are newly infected,” he said. “Too often prevention programmes are not reaching those most in need.”

“We can eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV. We can empower young people to protect themselves from HIV. We can stop violence against women and girls. We can protect drug users from becoming infected with HIV. And we can reduce sexual transmission of HIV. “

The annual report showed that about two million people died of AIDS-related illness in 2008, a figure which is some 10 per cent less than that of five years ago.

According to UNAIDS and the World Health Organization as many as 2.9 million lives have been saved since the availability of effective treatment in 2006.

Cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodriguez Maradiaga, head of Catholic aid and international development agency, Caritas Internationalis, last week called for immediate action to prevent the deaths of children with HIV in poor countries, saying while it was a basic right of children with HIV to be allowed to grow up and become adults, “yet half of children with HIV die before their second birthday because they live in poor countries where access to adequate care is limited”.

More than two million children aged under 15 are living with HIV while around 15 million children aged under 18 have lost one or both parents to an AIDS-related illness. It is estimated 430,000 children aged under 15 were newly infected in 2008 while some 280,000 died AIDS-related deaths.

“For many, the promise of universal access is coming too late. Too late for people like one mother in South Africa whose child died on her back as she raced him to hospital. He had an AIDS-related illness, like his two siblings who also died,” he said. 

“The mother is now getting help from Caritas, but she faces the daily pain of having lost three children who never got access to proper AIDS care.”

Caritas, through its Haart for Children campaign, is urging governments, pharmaceutical companies and the global community to ensure children have early access to HIV and TB testing and treatment.

“No mother or father should have to watch helplessly as their child dies,” said Cardinal Rodriguez. “No child should have to suffer because they were born in a country with a high AIDS rate and a poor health system. Universal access isn’t about geography, it’s about humanity. It’s about reducing suffering and saving lives. It’s about allowing children to grow up and flourish.”

In Australia, more than 17,000 people were living with HIV infection as at the end of last year with the annual number of new diagnoses having plateaued at around 1,000 cases a year for the past three years. To date, more than 6,700 people have died in Australia following a diagnosis of AIDS. 

~www.unaids.org
www.worldaidsday.org
www.caritas.org.au

 

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