HIV/AIDS devastates women, children most

Re-reporting, editing by Carolyn Bennett
Today is “World AIDS Day.”

The United Nations releases its “Children and AIDS: Fifth Stocktaking Report 2010.” The reports warns that millions of women and children have fallen through the cracks due to inequities rooted in gender, economic status, geographical location, education level and social status.

WOMEN and HIV/AIDS
Young women still shoulder the greater burden of infection. In many countries, women face their greatest risk of infection before age 25. Worldwide, more than 60 per cent of all young people living with HIV are female — in sub-Saharan Africa, that figure is nearly 70 per cent.

UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova said, “We need to address gender inequalities, including those that place women and girls at disproportionate risk to HIV and other adverse sexual and reproductive health outcomes.”

THE YOUNG and HIV/AIDS
“Adolescents are still becoming infected with HIV because they have neither the knowledge nor the access to services to protect themselves.”

“We must increase investments in young people’s education and health, including sexual and reproductive health,” said United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Executive Director Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, if we are to “prevent HIV infections and advance social protection.”

BROAD NUMBERS
An estimated 2.6 million people comprise the newly HIV infected. The number of people infected in 1999 was 3.1 million. There is a 20 percent difference in the ten-year period.

In 2009, 1.8 million people died from AIDS-related illnesses. The number dying in 2004 was 2.1 million people. The difference in the five-year period is nearly a fifth.

In most parts of the world, new HIV infections are steadily falling or stabilizing. In 2001, an estimated 5.7 million young people aged 15–24 were living with HIV. At the end of 2009, that number fell to 5 million. However, in nine countries — all of them in southern Africa — at least one in 20 young people is living with HIV.

Many countries have passed legislation to prevent discrimination against people living with HIV, UN World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Margaret Chan said, but there is often “poor enforcement of such laws and stigmatization of people living with HIV and most-at-risk populations persist.”

CHILDREN, BABIES, INFANTS and HIV/AIDS
UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Executive Director Anthony Lake added, “Every day, nearly 1,000 babies in sub-Saharan Africa are infected with HIV through mother-to-child transmission.”

Around the world an estimated “370,000 children are born with HIV each year,” said UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé, and every one of these infections is preventable. “We have to stop mothers from dying and babies from becoming infected with HIV,” she said.

In low- and middle-income countries, the number of children under the age of 15 who received treatment rose from 275,300 in 2008 to 356,400 in 2009. This increase means that 28 per cent of the 1.27 million children estimated to be in need of ART [antiretroviral treatment] receive it.

Infants are particularly vulnerable to the effects of HIV, which has lent urgency to the global campaign for early infant diagnosis. While the availability of early infant diagnosis services has increased dramatically in many countries, global coverage still remains low, at only 6 per cent in 2009. Without treatment, about half of the infected infants die before their second birthday.

“While we are encouraged by a decline in HIV incidence among young people of more than 25 percent in 15 key countries in sub-Saharan Africa between 2001 and 2009,” Irina Bokova said, “we must do everything possible to sustain and increase such positive trends in order to achieve universal access to prevention, treatment, care and support.”

THE CHALLENGE
“Our common goal is clear: universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support,” said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. “We must also work to make the AIDS response sustainable.

“Three decades into this crisis, let us set our sights on achieving the three zeros —

Zero new HIV infections

Zero discrimination

Zero AIDS-related deaths.

“On this World AIDS Day, let us pledge to work together to realize this vision for all of the world’s people.”

Sources and notes
“Achieving AIDS-free generation possible with stepped-up prevention – UN,” November 30, 2010,
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=36903&Cr=aids&Cr1=
“Welcoming results in global AIDS fight, UN urges world not to relent,” December 1, 2010,
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=36915&Cr=AIDS&Cr1=


From DES MOINES, Iowa, USA — “Iowans are observing World AIDS Day as the number of cases of HIV diagnosed in the state is on the rise.… Over the past 10 years, diagnoses have increased, on average, by four persons a year.” http://www.kcci.com/r/25971319/detail.html



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