Panafrican News Agency - November 30, 2001
Jerome Hule, PANA Correspondent

In its reports to mark this year's World AIDS Day on 1 December, UNAIDS noted that five million people were infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, in 2001.

This brings the total global HIV/AIDS infection to 40 million eople, UNAIDS said.

Though most of the new infections, 3.4 million, were in Sub- Saharan Africa, other regions such as Eastern Europe and Central Asia recorded the fastest rate of infection during the year while developed countries, where the epidemic has been contained, also saw an upsurge in new infections.

In Africa, several countries in the southern region joined Botswana in having a prevalence rate of more than 30 percent among pregnant women.

It was a similar bad story in West Africa where the UN report said the adult prevalence in 2001 in at least five countries, including populous Nigeria, exceeded the critical point of five percent.

There were, however, some sprinklings of good news in Senegal where infection rate has remained low and in Uganda where the epidemic has continued to decline in eight consecutive years.

While the epidemic had reached a rate of 30 percent in Uganda in 1992, it fell to 11.25 percent last year, UNAIDS noted.

In Zambia, a study showed a decline in sexual activity among the urban population resulting in a fall in HIV infection.

The UN report indicated that African countries are expanding their responses to the epidemic, though high prevalence rates mean that only gradual reduction can be achieved even with successful prevention efforts.

An estimated 2.3 million Africans died from AIDS in 2001, accounting for 77 percent of the three million AIDS deaths in the world.

Elsewhere, the UN report showed that AIDS is spreading rapidly in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, with Russia reporting 75,000 new infections in November. That figure, the report indicated, was a 15-fold increase in three years.

The highest infection rate of one percent in the region, however, is from Ukraine. The sad story about the region is that almost all countries there, including Estonia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, saw an upsurge in new infections during the year.

About 250,000 new HIV infections occurred in 2001, bringing the total number of infected people in the region to about a million.

AIDS also continued its destruction in Asia and the Pacific region, recording a million new infections and claiming the lives of nearly half a million lives. Though most countries in this highly populated region have a low infection rate, there is genuine fear that the epidemic may explode if not quickly controlled.

Increasing infections were also recorded in Latin America and the Caribbean and the Middle East and North Africa.

High-income countries, where advances in treatment and prevention had brought the epidemic under control, began to unravel in 2001.

"The notion that the epidemic is a thing of the past in high- income countries is unfounded," UNAIDS declared.

In those countries where an estimated 1.5 million people are living with the virus, 75,000 people were infected this year.

"New evidence of rising infection rates in North America, parts of Europe and Australia is emerging," the report said.

In advanced economies, HIV infection has been found to be affecting particularly poor and deprived communities.

In the US, for instance, the report noted that African Americans account for 47 percent of HIV/AIDS cases, though they constitute only 12 percent of the population.

To halt the spread of HIV infection in the world, the report urges countries to put in place effective prevention programmes, particularly among young people.

Equally important, according to the report, is the need to expand access to treatment and care.

Since 1980 when it was first reported, AIDS has claimed about 25 million people and produced about 13 million orphans, more than 90 percent of them in Africa.

The epidemic has also begun to have a drastic impact on the development and social conditions of highly affected countries.
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