40 Million Now Infected With HIV, U.N. Reports
By Thomas H. Maugh II
Aggressive treatment and prevention programs have reduced HIV infection rates in Kenya, Zimbabwe and the Caribbean, but the numbers continue to grow in the rest of the world, with more than 40 million people now living with the virus, according to a new U.N. report.
Globally, 4.9 million people became infected with the virus last year, and 3.1 million died of AIDS.
“It’s increasing everywhere,” Dr. Jim Yong Kim, director of HIV/ AIDS for the World Health Organization, said in a news conference Monday. “The report illustrates very clearly that we really are failing in attempting to prevent the epidemic in the rest of the world.”
The epidemic is gaining steam in Eastern Europe and Asia, where injection drug use and unsafe sex are common. As recently as five years ago, Asia accounted for 1 in 10 new infections, according to the report. Today, it is responsible for at least 1 in 5. More than 1.1 million people in Asia became infected in 2004 and 520,000 died of AIDS, up from 420,000 in the previous year.
“The reality is that the AIDS epidemic continues to outstrip global and national efforts to contain it,” said Dr. Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS.
Ignorance accounts for much of the spread, officials said. In India, more than 40 percent of prostitutes said they can tell whether a customer has HIV from his appearance. In Karachi, Pakistan, 20 percent of prostitutes did not know what a condom was and one-third had never heard of AIDS. In the Philippines, 90 percent of people surveyed believed that HIV could be contracted by sharing a meal with an infected person.
Despite that gloomy news, WHO officials could point to some gains in the regions that have been hardest-hit. Declines in the infection rate had previously been noted in Senegal, Uganda and Thailand, but those were considered anomalies.
“Now we have Kenya, several of the Caribbean countries and Zimbabwe with a decline,” Piot said in the teleconference in which the report was released. In those countries, he added, “people are starting later with their first sexual intercourse. They are having fewer partners. There’s more condom use. It’s a consistency now that’s a really good sign.”
In the Caribbean, infection rates fell in Barbados, Bermuda and the Bahamas. Cities in Haiti also showed declines in the number living with HIV, but that may be partly because of increased deaths from AIDS, Piot said.