Aids 'ABC' is failing millions
2004-07-06 22:26
Special Report
The South African government has announced a joint venture to reduce the cost of anti-retroviral drugs with a Swiss company.
Johannesburg - Abstinence, being faithful and condom use - dubbed the ABC of HIV-Aids prevention - is not enough protection for millions of girls and women in sub-Saharan Africa.
This message came through in a live screen interview with Unicef executive director Carol Bellamy at a press launch in Johannesburg on Tuesday of two United Nations reports on Aids.
Bellamy was in Addis Ababa at the African Union summit.
The documents were the 2004 Report on the Global Aids Epidemic - released ahead of the 15th International Aids conference to be held later this month in Bangkok, Thailand - and the Report on the Secretary-General's Task Force on Women, Girls and HIV-Aids in Southern Africa.
They are the products of UNAids, the joint United Nations programme on HIV-Aids, and the labour of governments and Aids activists who had conducted worldwide research.
Three focuses of the reports, relating to women, included:
intergenerational sex;
the importance of women getting an education; and
violence against women.
"While there was a pattern of girls having sex with men between five and seven years their elder and becoming infected within a year of losing their virginity, young married women who might be faithful were also at risk because of frequent, unprotected sex," said Bellamy.
The press conference also heard that in Africa, where women were infected at an earlier age than men, the gap in HIV prevalence between the sexes was growing.
Violence against girls and women, an accellerant to the spread of HIV-Aids, was growing globally, she said.
The reports also said that although global spending on Aids had increased from $300m (about R1.85bn) in 1996 to nearly $5bn (about R31bn) in 2003, it was less than half of what would be needed by 2005 in developing countries.
"The estimated $20bn would provide antiretroviral therapy to just more than six million people, of whom four million were in sub-Saharan Africa; support 22 million orphans; provide voluntary counselling and testing for 100 million adults; school-based Aids education for 900 million students and peer counselling services for 60 million young people not in school," said Mark Stirling, director of the UNAids regional support team.
Pandemic continues to grow
The reports further noted that in sub-Saharan Africa, adult HIV prevalence appeared to have stabilised.
"However, a stable prevalence is possible only if Aids-associated deaths are replaced by new infections," said Stirling.
"Thus, in sub-Saharan Africa, a stable prevalence still represents more than two million new infections each year."
"Although the new global estimates are slightly lower than the previously published estimates, the actual number of people living with HIV has not decreased, rather the pandemic continues to grow, based on revised 2001 estimates".
- SAPA