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Generations of Africans to be affected by AIDS pandemic: UN
AIDS has hit sub-Saharan Africa so badly that the disease will cast a shadow over generations to come, even in countries that succeed in the battle against it, the United Nations warned on Tuesday. Africans account for some 25.4 million of the 39.4 million people around the world who have either the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) or AIDS, the UN's World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNAIDS said in an annual report. "HIV infection is becoming endemic in sub-Saharan Africa," AIDS Epidemic Update, released ahead of World AIDS Day on December 1, said. "Current high prevalence levels mean that even those countries that do eventually reverse the epidemic's course will have to contend with serious AIDS epidemics for many subsequent years. The havoc wrought by AIDS will shape the lives of several generations of Africans." Commercial sex, sexual abuse and violence were pinpointed as the big vectors of HIV/AIDS in Africa.
| Another source is the re-use of disposable medical instruments such as syringes and needles, but the AIDS organizations don't like to talk about that. |
The good news is that east Africa has seen modest declines in HIV prevalence among pregnant women, and levels have stayed steady in central and west Africa. This has helped keep the continent's HIV prevalence to 7.4 percent of the adult population, compared to 7.5 percent in 2003. On the downside, HIV prevalence among expectant mothers has risen sharply in southern Africa from five percent in 1990 to more than 25 percent this year. Southern Africa is "the worst affected sub-region in the world,"Â the report declared bluntly. Around 11.4 million people in the nine countries that make up this sub-region live with HIV or acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), representing "almost 30 percent of the global number of people living with HIV in an area where only two percent of the world's total population resides," the report said. South Africa has the highest number of people living with HIV in the world -- 5.3 million, more than half of them women. Four other countries in the region—Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland—all have "very high HIV prevalence, often exceeding 30 percent among pregnant women".
Posted by: Steve White 2004-11-23 |
