Aids: Hope for Africa

2005-02-25 09:30

Boston - Condom use and multiple-drug "cocktails" have slowed the spread of Aids cases in certain African countries, a global Aids conference in Boston was told on Thursday.

However, conference goers at the 12th annual Conference on Retrovirus and Opportunistic Infections were told that a large increase in availability of so-called "tri-therapy" of anti-retroviral drugs is needed urgently to slow the spread of HIV, the virus that causes Aids.

"In the last six months of 2004, the number of people under tri-therapy has doubled in Africa," said World Health Organisation official Jim Kim.

"But we need to scale up (that effort) rapidly," he said.

According to a 10-year study, Uganda saw a 30% fall in infection rates, especially where HIV patients received the three-drug cocktails.

The findings were important in showing how the Aids pandemic might be slowed in sub-Saharan Africa, where more than 60% of the 39.4 million HIV-infected people in the world live. More than three million people died of Aids around the world in 2004.

Maria Wawer, a professor at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health in New York, said that although there were no significant changes in sexual activity among those being surveyed in the 1994-2003 Uganda study, the drug treatments and condom usage helped lower infection rates.

"We observed no increase in abstinence or monogamy" in the Uganda study, said Wawer. "But condom use has increased in casual relationships."

Abstinence

"The group of people who have used condoms consistently have a significantly lower rate of HIV acquisition," she said, pointing to the important doubling of usage among teenagers of 15 to 19 years old.

Wawer declined to explain her mention of abstinence in the context of Washington's anti-Aids effort.

Last year, the administration of President George W Bush allocated 100 million dollars for promoting, among other things, abstinence as key to beating the spread of HIV.

The WHO's Kim reported to the conference on the results of increased use of tri-therapies to halt Aids and HIV transmission.

In the final six months of 2004, the number of people worldwide receiving the drug cocktail rose to 700 000 from 44 000, with most of the recipients in African nations including Botswana, Malawi Mozambique and Uganda, he said.

However, he stressed the need to attain the goal set on World Aids Day in 2003 of making the treatment available to three million people in developing countries by this year.

- SAPA