Global advances in HIV treatment and prevention continue to be lopsided, UN officials said during the release of the organization's "2009 AIDS Epidemic Update." Antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) have extended the lives of millions of patients, yet more than half of patients in low- and middle-income countries who need treatment are not getting it. Expanding access to ARVs is one of several priorities the UN details in the report.
"The major problem we are facing today is inequity," said Michel Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS. "It is very important we don't continue to have 400,000 babies born with HIV in Africa every year. That is something we can deliver. That is why we are calling for virtual elimination of transmission from mother to child by 2015."
In 2008, more than 4 million people living with the virus were receiving ARVs, up from 3 million in 2007, said Teguest Guerma, acting director of the World Health Organization's HIV/AIDS department. Even so, more than 5 million people need treatment and are not receiving it, he said.
Second-line drugs are "still very expensive," Guerma said. "If [patients] fail in the first-line regime, they need to switch to the second. One reason it is not being done is because it is not available and it costs too much. Countries are not purchasing it."
The HIV/AIDS epidemic appears to be stabilizing in most regions of the world, said Paul De Lay, deputy executive director of UNAIDS. "The data we are seeing confirm this," De Lay said. "It is a combination of decreasing deaths, more people therefore living, adding to the total number of infected and decreasing new infections."
Sidibe called for countries to end discriminatory laws that fuel HIV's spread by driving underground such high-risk groups as men who have sex with men. Other UN priorities include ending violence against females and protecting drug users from HIV.
11/24/09
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Source: Reuters; Courtesy of the CDC National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention