Global HIV epidemic getting worse, UN AIDS agency says

The global HIV epidemic is getting worse and the future toll of the virus will be dramatic even if its spread is halted instantly, the head of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDA) warned today.

The global HIV epidemic is getting worse and the future toll of the virus will be dramatic even if its spread is halted instantly, the head of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) warned today.

In an address to a joint meeting of the UN General Assembly’s Second and Third Committees, which deal with economic and humanitarian issues, UNAIDS Executive Director Dr. Peter Piot told delegates that the sobering facts from the latest country-by-country estimates released in June showed new highs in southern Africa where, in three countries, more than one third of all adults are infected.

Dr. Piot said there were new signs of increase in West Africa, while in the Caribbean, the world's second worst affected region, HIV/AIDS was advancing, especially in some mainland countries on the Caribbean shores.

Meanwhile, the fastest growing HIV rates were in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Dr. Piot noted, "where young people are worst-affected by an epidemic driven by social dislocation and drug use." In six states in India, he said, more than one per cent of all adults are HIV positive while there are signs of rapid increases in China and Indonesia, two of the world's most populous countries.

"In the speed and extent of its global spread and in its destructive force, HIV/AIDS now stands as the worst epidemic in human history," he said.

The tools to combat the epidemic were well known and spelled out in a Declaration of Commitment adopted by countries at a recent UN conference, Dr. Piot said, pointing to a number of achievements in the areas of leadership, partnership and resources.

Across the globe, he said, 91 countries now have national strategies to tackle AIDS. "In sub-Saharan Africa alone, 40 countries have national strategies where only 14 did three years ago, and 19 have national AIDS councils, up from only three," he said.

As further support for the epidemic, more than 70 international corporations were now involved in the Global Business Council on AIDS while this year alone, about $3 billion had been allocated to fight the disease in low- and middle-income countries, a 50 per cent increase over 2001.

But too many of the efforts against AIDS were still being conducted as small-scale interventions and not nationwide comprehensive programmes, Dr. Piot said. "The most emphatic lesson in 20 years of fighting AIDS is that half measures do not work," he stressed.