NEW YORK — A quarter century after the discovery of AIDS, the world finally has the tools and know-how to eradicate the plague of the century. What remains lacking are adequate funding and the political will to end the problem. This is the conclusion of the Tenth UNAIDS Report, 'UN agency for the fight against AIDS,' announced during the World AIDS Summit scheduled for Wednesday to Friday at the Glass Palace in New York.
ANNIVERSARY – The June 5, 1981, the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta (CDC) published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report a study that for the first time identified AIDS, described as “a new disease affecting gay men”. Since then, the report says, “the disease has spread like wildfire: from a few isolated outbreaks to every country in the world. Killing 25 million people and infecting 65 million”The new statistics—obtained with the collaboration of 126 governments and humanitarian groups in over 30 countries—reveal a growing problem. 38.6 million people are HIV-positive; over 2.8 million deaths in 2005 alone; and more than 4 million new diagnoses of the disease compared to the previous year.
FEMALE VIRUS – The disease is no longer just, or even primarily, a gay problem. "AIDS today has the face of a woman," the UN Secretary General explained to reporters. Kofi Annan. “17 million of the sick are women, that is, 46% of the total”", she added, "13 million of them live in Africa. Home to 12 million AIDS orphans." But the trend also affects Western countries. Among African-American women aged 25 to 34, AIDS is the leading cause of death. Of them, 78 out of 100 were infected through unprotected heterosexual intercourse. To emphasize this new reality for women, an HIV-positive woman, American writer Mary Fisher, will speak from the podium at the General Assembly, for the first time in the sixty-year history of the UN.
GAY AT RISK AGAIN – From the USA to Europe and from Australia to Japan, we are once again looking with apprehension at the risky sex between homosexuals. In Great Britain, unprotected sex between gay men is the cause of a third of new cases; in Germany, half of infections are linked to such unprotected sex (compared to a third in 2001).
PRIVILEGED USA – Here too, the gap between rich and poor countries remains abysmal. Today, 25 million HIV-positive people live in the’Sub-Saharan Africa. In Asia, there are another 8.3 million, over two-thirds of whom are in India: the country with the highest number of people in the world who have contracted the HIV virus (in 2005, the record was held by South Africa). The United States stands out for its low mortality rate: only 30,000 deaths in 2005 out of a record 1.2 million HIV-positive people. "This is all thanks to access to retroviral drugs that help keep the progression of the disease at bay," explains the report, which also notes that "immigrants, ethnic minorities, and the marginalized in general" continue to be severely penalized. Although they represent only 12 percent of the US population, African Americans, for example, account for 50 percent of all new diagnoses.
FUTURE – How to resolve the emergency? “We need to invest much more money in treatment and prevention.”, "We have allocated $8.9 billion for 2006, instead of the $15 billion we need," a UNAIDS spokesperson replies. "And that will increase to $22 billion in 2008; $11.4 billion for prevention programs alone." Among the positive trends, the report cites increasingly effective retroviral drugs, low-cost diagnostic kits, increased use of condoms, and now virus-proof blood from transfusions. This is in addition to the increased effort to promote AIDS education in schools. In 1974, primary schools in 1981, and in 1981, middle schools in 58 countries now discuss AIDS, a topic considered taboo for decades.
