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HEALTH: Women Equal Men as HIV Victims
By Sanjay Suri
LONDON, Nov 26 (IPS) - For the first time, close to half the number of
people living with HIV/AIDS are women, the annual United Nations report on
HIV/AIDS reveals.
This "feminisation" of AIDS has been bolstered by the AIDS/HIV epidemic
in sub-Saharan Africa where 60 per cent of those suffering are women, Dr
Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS told media representatives in
London at the launch of the report Tuesday.
The total number of people living with HIV/AIDS around the world is 42
million, of whom 19.2 million are women and 3.2 million are children under
15 years, says the 'AIDS Epidemic Update 2002' issued by the joint UN
programme (UNAIDS) and the World Health Organisation. The report was issued
in advance of World Aids Day December 1.
The incidence of infection is rising and it is "spreading very rapidly in
areas where it was not known previously," Dr Piot said. Some new areas
experiencing a high number of new cases are Asia and Eastern Europe.
.The spread of HIV/AIDS is also fuelling a "widening and increasingly deadly
famine in southern Africa," the report says.
.The new report says the African famine is a "clear example of how the
impact of HIV/AIDS reaches beyond the loss of life and health care costs
traditionally associated with disease."
More than 14 million people are now at risk of starvation in the six
southern Africa states Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia, and
Zimbabwe, the report says. All six of these predominantly agricultural
societies are battling serious AIDS epidemics, with more than five million
adults currently living with HIV/AIDS in these countries, out of a total
adult population of some 26 million, the report says.
"We can see now that AIDS is not just a health crisis but a development
crisis, and nowhere more so than in southern Africa," Prof Alan Whiteside
from the University of South Africa at Natal, and an expert on AIDS said at
the launch.
The relationship between AIDS and a food crisis is only now coming to be
understood, he said. "It is not just erratic rains that are causing the
problem," he said. "People are just too sick to go out and work in the
fields even on the good days," he said. "We are losing agricultural workers,
losing the learning that passes from generation to generation, and we are
losing children who remain uneducated and uncared for."
These crises will drive HIV/AIDS higher, he said. The resulting economic
crisis will only drive more women into unsafe sexual liaisons, he said.
AIDS-related deaths in a farm household cause crop output to plummet -
often by up to 60 per cent, the report says. A 2002 study in central Malawi
has shown that about 70 per cent of surveyed households had suffered labour
losses due to sickness.
The report indicates that seven million agricultural workers in 25
African countries have died of AIDS since 1985. In 2001 alone, AIDS killed
nearly 500,000 people in the six predominantly agricultural countries
threatened with famine, most of who were in their productive prime.
"The famine in southern Africa brings the world face-to-face with the
deep and devastating impact of AIDS," said Dr Piot. "We must act now, on a
much larger scale than anything we have done before, not only to assist
those nations already hard-hit, but also to stop the explosive growth of
AIDS in the parts of the world where the epidemic is newly emerging."
The report says that in the Central Asian Republics there were an
estimated 250,000 new infections, bringing the total for the region to 1.2
million people living with HIV/AIDS. In Uzbekistan there were almost as many
new infections reported in the first six months of this year as in the
entire previous decade, the report says.
"Several countries in Asia and the Pacific, including China, Indonesia
and Papua New Guinea, may also face huge growth in their epidemics," the
report says. UNAIDS warns 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 and care in the region, where the epidemic is still
in its early phases.
"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," says Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, Director-General of the World
Health Organisation.
"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 countries in Eastern Europe, central,
south and eastern Asia." The report says that in Asia, 7.2 million people
are now living with HIV.
In Indonesia, where injecting drug use was virtually unknown ten years
ago, now has as many as many as 200,000 injecting drug users-and "rates of
HIV infection are rocketing among them," the report says. Data indicate that
up to 50 per cent of injecting drug users in Jakarta may be HIV-positive,
compared to 0 per cent in 1998. This route of transmission could account for
more than 80 per cent of the country's HIV infections in the year ahead.
The report cites evidence from Brazil that prevention efforts, including
drug treatment and needle exchange, can lower HIV prevalence among injecting
drug users. It also identifies several other successes in the fight against
AIDS.
Evidence from South Africa and Ethiopia indicates that the awareness
campaigns and prevention programmes that have been launched in recent years
are starting to have an impact, particularly among young people, the report
says.
In South Africa, the number of pregnant women under age 20 who are
HIV-positive fell to 15.4 per cent in 2001, compared to 21 per cent in 1998.
In Ethiopia, the HIV rate also appears to be in decline among young
inner-city women in the capital, Addis Ababa.
These trends follow the reporting of similar findings in Zambia. Uganda
also continues to demonstrate success in 2002 in reducing new HIV infections
in several parts of the country. The incidence in Uganda has been declining
every year for the past ten years, Dr Piot said.
In Asia, rates of HIV infection are levelling off in Cambodia, the
country in the region with the highest proportion of adults living with HIV.
This trend is again a direct result of a sustained national prevention
programme. Cambodia reports that HIV infections among sex workers declined
from 42 per cent in 1998 to 29 per cent in 2002. The decline was most
dramatic among sex workers under the age of 20. In the Caribbean region,
there are signs that the epidemic may be stabilizing in the Dominican
Republic.
The fight against AIDS is severely under-resourced at the moment, Dr Piot
said. The current spending of three billion dollars needs to be increased to
10.5 billion dollars a year by 2005, he said. By 2007 the fight against AIDS
will need 15 billion dollars a year, and that level would have to be
maintained for at least a decade after that, the report says.
(END/2002)
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