United Press International - November 26, 2002

The 36-page report, "AIDS Epidemic Update 2002," said nearly one-fifth of the 26 million people in Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe have the virus, including 600,000 children under the age of 15. More than 14 million of them are at risk of starvation.

The report was released Tuesday because World AIDS Day falls on Sunday this year and the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday is on Thursday.

The report said that of the 42 million people living with AIDS in the world, 5 million were infected in 2002 while 3 million people died of the virus so far this year.

Published by the Joint U.N. Program on HIV/AIDS and the World Health Organization, the report detailed how AIDS combined with other factors such as droughts, floods and shortsighted national and international policies, caused a steady fall in agricultural production and household income.

It said 7 million agricultural workers in 25 African countries have died of AIDS since 1985, while in 2001 alone, the virus killed nearly 500,000 people in the six predominantly agricultural countries threatened with famine.

"The famine is a tragic example of how this epidemic combines with other crises to create even greater catastrophes," UNAIDS Executive Director, Dr. Peter Piot said in a statement released in connection with the report's launch in London.

"What we are seeing today in a number of countries of sub-Saharan Africa is an HIV epidemic that is overwhelming the coping resources of entire communities.

The example of southern Africa illustrated that AIDS could not be addressed in isolation and that responses to the epidemic must take account of its impact in every economic and social sector, he said.

The report also showed that AIDS was rapidly expanding in new areas, with Eastern Europe and the Central Asian Republics accounting for the world's fastest growth. It said that in these regions there were 250,000 new infections in 2002, bringing the total number of people living with HIV/AIDS to 1.2 million.

In Uzbekistan, there were almost as many new infections in the first six months of this year as in the entire previous decade.

China, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea were among several countries in Asia and the Pacific that also may be facing explosive growth, the report said. Injecting drugs was the main form of HIV transmission in Eastern Europe, several Asian countries, the Middle East and North Africa.

UNAIDS warned that 11 million more people will acquire HIV in Asia by 2007, unless concerted and effective action is taken to increase access to HIV prevention.

"We know there is a point in every country's AIDS crisis where the epidemic breaks out from especially vulnerable groups into the wider population," said Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, director-general of the World Health Organization.

"This is a critical moment of opportunity and danger. Unless we see national prevention initiatives championed by the highest level of government, the growth in infections can be unstoppable. We are at this critical moment today in a number of counties."

There were, however, some early signs of success in Zambia, Uganda, Ethiopia and South Africa.

The report said the number of pregnant women under age 20 who were HIV-positive fell to 15.4 per cent in 2001 from 21 per cent in 1998. It also showed strong evidence that HIV infections were stabilizing in the Dominican Republic and leveling off in Cambodia, the country in Asia with the highest adult population living with the virus and where HIV infection among sex workers fell from 42 percent in 1998 to 29 percent in 2002.

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