Marginalised groups have stubbornly high rates of HIV
November 04, 2013 - HIV epidemics are becoming more concentrated in marginalised
groups such as sex workers, drug users and gay men, and could defy global attempts
to combat AIDS without a change in attitudes, according to a U.N. special envoy.
Michel Sidibe, formerly head of UNAIDS and now tackling HIV and AIDS in Eastern Europe,
says he would like to be able to celebrate without reservation vast global progress
made in the past decade, but stubborn infection rates and alarming growth of outbreaks
in hard-to-reach populations make that difficult. The risk, he says, is that as the
world turns the tide of the generalised global AIDS epidemic, the virus will return
to being a disease that plagues only certain groups, and the political will to overcome
it there may fade. "If we do not address the roots of the problem, if we do not address
stigma, discrimination and inappropriate legislation, if we don't look at these people
from a public health perspective, rather than from a delinquent, criminal perspective
as we do now, then the trend will only go on," Sidibe said in an interview. "Then
the AIDS epidemic will become more and more a sum of these concentrated epidemics."
Some 35.3 million people worldwide are infected with the human immunodeficiency
virus (HIV) that causes AIDS, but the rising number of patients reflects great strides
in recent years in developing sophisticated HIV tests and combination AIDS drugs and
getting them to many of those who need them to stay alive. The annual AIDS death
toll is falling, dropping to 1.6 million people in 2012, down from a peak of 2.3 million
in 2005, and there are also steadily declining rates of new HIV infections: a third
fewer in 2013 than in 2011. The progress has generated much hope - and many headlines
- about the possible end of AIDS, or a potential world without HIV, or the chance
of an AIDS-free generation, in our lifetimes. Sidibe refers to this - both the progress
and the hope – as "extraordinary". "I'm really concerned about the future of the
AIDS epidemic, especially at a time when we are perhaps a little too optimistic because
of the huge progress we are making from a technological and scientific perspective,"
he said. (Source: Reuters)