Inter Press Service - November 29, 2005
Julio Godoy

The resurgence has been fed by wrong beliefs that AIDS is no longer a deadly disease in rich countries, health experts and activists say.

More than 10,000 people reported HIV infections in Germany and France in 2004 and 2005. That is a small number relative to the three million new cases reported worldwide this year, but it is a rise from stable levels in these countries.

More than 2,600 people contracted the virus in 2005 in Germany, the Berlin-based Robert-Koch-Institute said in a report this week.. That brings the number of people with HIV/AIDS in Germany to close to 50,000. Of these about 29,000 are reported to be homosexuals.

A report by the French Institute of Health Surveillance (IdVS, after its French name) says that 7,000 people reported infections in France in 2004, bringing the total to about 150,000. The IdVS says the groups most affected are homosexuals and heterosexual immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa.

A report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) indicates that in Britain the number of new reported cases has more than doubled from 3,500 in 2000 to 7,258 cases in 2004.

"I am extremely worried by the growth of new HIV infections, because it shows a new lack of prevention and laxity," French health minister Xavier Bertrand said at a press conference Monday.

German health minister Ulla Schmidt sounded a similar warning. "Practically all people (in Germany) are well informed about AIDS, and about the new, better treatments against the disease," she said Tuesday. "But this information leads too many people to underestimate the risks associated with HIV infection and with AIDS."

WHO figures indicate that in Western and Central Europe more than 720,000 people are infected with the HIV virus or have developed AIDS.

WHO says in its report on AIDS released Nov 21 that "the number (of people in Europe living with the disease) continues to grow with signs in several countries of a resurgence of risky sexual behaviour." In Germany sex between men accounted for 49 percent of new cases in 2005, compared with 37 percent in 2001.

Anti-AIDS activists in France say the resurgence of the infections shows that the campaign against the disease is failing.

"The disease is now seen as trivial, as a chronic disease," Jean-Francois Delfraissy, director of the French National Agency Against AIDS told IPS. "Therefore it is extremely urgent to launch a new campaign of prevention, especially among young people.."

A member of Act Up, an association of homosexuals, told IPS that "in the face of a growing number of infections, we have to declare the year as a dark one."

Activists and researchers blame both the government and individual sexual practices. In a report for the National Council on AIDS, respected pathologist Willi Rozenbaum accused the government of acting "with a total lack of coherence" in dealing with AIDS. He said that health authorities had "failed to warn the public in a loud voice" about the risks associated with the disease.

Christian Saout, president of AIDES, a leading non-governmental organisation, said: "Clearly, government action against HIV infections is insufficient."

Act Up said in a statement that "French schools do not have one cent to pay for prevention campaigns among their students. In addition, the government has dismantled all health programmes aimed at immigrants suffering from AIDS. And France has not augmented its financial contribution to the World Fund against AIDS."

Activists also condemned discrimination against people who have HIV or AIDS. Although no data exists about such discrimination on the labour market, Bertrand Audoin, director of Sidaction (SIDA is the French abbreviation for AIDS), says "AIDS continues to be seen as a dirty disease, and that leads to discrimination."

Despite the fact that new therapies allow persons suffering from AIDS to work efficiently as healthy people, "admitting the disease is the first step towards professional suicide," Audoin told IPS.

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