Reply #7: AIDS pandemic spreading to "every corner of the Globe"

[TriSec]

From Guardian UK, via Common Dreams:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0531-05.htm

Twenty five years after the first Aids cases were reported, there is no sign of a halt to the pandemic which is likely to spread to every corner of the globe, the head of the United Nations' Aids agency has said.

Peter Piot was speaking as UNAids released a report which declares that the world's response to the disease that has infected about 65 million people and killed 25 million has been nowhere near adequate.

Five years after a special UN session pledged its commitment to halting the Aids pandemic, only a few countries have met the targets laid down.

"I think we will see a further globalisation of the epidemic spreading to every single corner of the planet," said Dr Piot. "It won't go away one fine day, and then we wake up and say, 'Oh, Aids is gone'. I think we have to start thinking about looking at the next generations. There's an increasing diversity in how the epidemic looks."

India has the largest number of people living with the virus. With 5.7m infections, it has overtaken South Africa's total of 5.5m. But the epidemic is still at its worst in sub-Saharan Africa, where 90% of the world's HIV-infected children live.

One in three pregnant women in South Africa tested HIV-positive in public antenatal clinics in 2004.

"I think in Africa, it is only comparable in demographic terms to the slave trade regarding the impact it has had on the population," Dr Piot said. "In southern Africa, HIV prevalence continues to go up, and they're already the world record."


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