Inter Press Service - November 28, 2000
Gustavo Capdevila

AIDS is not a closed case because this year 5.3 million people were infected with the HIV virus, stressed Awa-Marie Coll-Seck, director of policy, strategy and research for the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

With the new HIV cases, the total people infected reaches 36.1 million, which is 40 percent more than the projections made about the AIDS epidemic in 1991. The report by UNAIDS and the World Health Organisation (WHO), "AIDS Epidemic Update: December 2000," released Tuesday in preparation for World Aids Day, Friday, Dec 1, also covers the expansion of the epidemic in Eastern Europe and the dramatic economic impacts of the illness in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The UNAIDS campaign 2000 focuses on the role of men in curbing HIV transmission, with the slogan, "Men Make a Difference."

An estimate by the two health agencies about Africa's requirements to pay for prevention efforts and medical attention reaches 3.0 billion dollars, said Daniel Tarantola, a WHO adviser.

This sum "is a fraction of the 52 billion dollars spent in the United States annually on obesity," commented Peter Piot, UNAIDS executive director, who presided over the presentation of the report in Berlin.

But the principal focus of the report is the sharp rise in HIV infections and AIDS in the countries of Eastern Europe.

Data for this year indicate there are more than 700,000 people in the region who are HIV positive. One year ago, the total was just 420,000, said Coll-Seck at the report's release in Geneva.

The situation is particularly serious in the Russian Federation, where HIV infection figures are much higher this year than in all previous years combined.

But the same UNAIDS-WHO report also has some good news, showing that despite grave problems in Eastern Europe, there are examples of the positive results of broad efforts in countries like Ukraine and Belarus.

In the two countries, far-reaching projects and multi-sectoral actions have been executed to improve prevention, especially among people who use intravenous drugs, explained Coll-Seck.

The AIDS Epidemic Update for the first time mentions a trend towards the stabilisation of infection rates in Sub-Saharan Africa. This phenomenon demonstrates the successful efforts made in HIV/AIDS prevention, said the UNAIDS official.

The population's compliance with prevention programmes has brought down infection rates in Uganda, northern Tanzania and in Zambia.

In those countries with higher HIV/AIDS prevalence, with over 25 percent of the adult population already infected, there are fewer people still likely to become infected, explaining in part the epidemic's stabilisation, according to Coll-Seck.

But encouraging data does not justify complacency with respect to seeking a solution to the AIDS problem, because resources continue to be scarce and access to medical treatment is very limited, especially in developing countries, and in Africa most of all.

AIDS claimed 2.4 million lives on the African continent this year, while the total deaths from the epidemic worldwide reached 3.0 million.

In the course of 2000, in South and Southeast Asia, an estimated 700,000 adults were infected with HIV, of which 450,000 were men.

But most of the nations of East Asia and the Pacific are "keeping the epidemic at bay," says the report. The number of new HIV infections in the region this year was approximately 130,000.

In Latin America, meanwhile, there were 210,000 new infections this year, including adults and children. The total number of people living with AIDS reached 1.4 million, an increase of 100,000 over last year.

The epidemic is complex in Latin America and the Caribbean, says the AIDS Epidemic Update. The disease is spread by heterosexual and homosexual sex, as well as through the sharing of needles in intravenous drug use.

In the world's wealthier countries, prevention efforts have begun to slow. New infections reached 30,000 adults in Western Europe and 45,000 in North America, largely attributed to intravenous drug use. (END/IPS/tra-so/pc/dm/ld/00)
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