"AIDS Epidemic Only Getting Started According to United Nations Official"
Associated Press, (07.27.2005) Michael Astor
With major new outbreaks in Central Asia and China and a record 5 million new infections worldwide last year, the HIV/AIDS epidemic's impact has still yet to be fully realized, UNAIDS Executive Director Dr. Peter Piot said Wednesday. "It's still an emerging epidemic. Just now we're getting into the globalization phase," said Piot, who was in Rio de Janeiro to address the 3rd International AIDS Society (IAS) Conference on HIV Pathogenesis and Treatment, which ended Wednesday.
The global epidemic is also undergoing "feminism," changing from a disease that largely affected gay men to a disease infecting roughly equal numbers of women and men, said Piot. About 60 percent of those infected in southern Africa are female.
At the conference, doctors, health professionals, and public policy experts documented only incremental progress in the AIDS fight. Scientists said hopes for a vaccine in the near future were remote, and they could not predict when a new class of HIV drugs to fight resistant virus would reach the market.
"There is no one magic bullet, what we need is a tool kit," said Dr. Helene Gayle, president of IAS. "There were 5 million new infections last year, more than any previous year and yet only one in five people have access to prevention information and services." Just one in 10 gay men and one in six sex workers have been reached by prevention programs, UNAIDS estimates.
A new HIV outbreak in Central Asia is being driven by cheap heroin flowing out of Afghanistan. And in China, a policy of re-injecting blood donors with pooled donor plasma, which allowed them to donate more frequently, also infected hundred of thousands of people.
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