This “feminization” of AIDS has been bolstered by the AIDS/HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa where 60 per cent of those suffering are women, Dr Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS told media representatives in London at the launch of the report on Tuesday.
The total number of people living with HIV/AIDS around the world is 42 million, of whom 19.2 million are women and 3.2 million are children under 15 years, says the ‘AIDS Epidemic Update 2002’ issued by the joint UN programme (UNAIDS) and the World Health Organization. The report was issued in advance of World Aids Day on Dec 1.
The incidence of infection is rising and it is “spreading very rapidly in areas where it was not known previously,” Dr Piot said.
The new report says the African famine is a clear example of how the impact of HIV/AIDS reaches beyond the loss of life and health care costs traditionally associated with disease.
More than 14 million people are now at risk of starvation in the six southern Africa states Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, the report says. All six of these predominantly agricultural societies are battling serious AIDS epidemics, with more than five million adults currently living with HIV/AIDS in these countries, out of a total adult population of some 26 million, the report says.
These crises will drive HIV/AIDS higher, he said. The resulting economic crisis will only drive more women into unsafe sexual liaisons, he said.
AIDS-related deaths in a farm household cause crop output to plummet — often by up to 60 per cent, the report says. A 2002 study in central Malawi has shown that about 70 per cent of surveyed households had suffered labour losses due to sickness.
The report indicates that seven million agricultural workers in 25 African countries have died of AIDS since 1985. In 2001 alone, AIDS killed nearly 500,000 people in the six predominantly agricultural countries threatened with famine, most of who were in their productive prime.
The report says that in the Central Asian Republics there were an estimated 250,000 new infections, bringing the total for the region to 1.2 million people living with HIV/AIDS. In Uzbekistan there were almost as many new infections reported in the first six months of this year as in the entire previous decade, the report says.
“Several countries in Asia and the Pacific, including China, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, may also face huge growth in their epidemics,” the report says. UNAIDS warns that 11 million more people will acquire HIV in Asia by 2007, unless concerted and effective action is taken to increase access to HIV prevention and care in the region, where the epidemic is still in its early phases.
Evidence from South Africa and Ethiopia indicates that the awareness campaigns and prevention programmes that have been launched in recent years are starting to have an impact, particularly among young people, the report says.
In South Africa, the number of pregnant women under age 20 who are HIV-positive fell to 15.4 per cent in 2001, compared to 21 per cent in 1998. In Ethiopia, the HIV rate also appears to be in decline among young inner-city women in the capital, Addis Ababa.
These trends follow the reporting of similar findings in Zambia. Uganda also continues to demonstrate success in 2002 in reducing new HIV infections in several parts of the country. —Dawn/Inter/Press News Service.