The number of people worldwide living with HIV/AIDS has passed the 40 million mark for the first time, according to United Nations figures released just prior to World AIDS Day.
Globally, more the 25 million people have died from AIDS-related illness since the first cases were identified almost a quarter century ago. The report, jointly issued by UNAIDS and the World Health Organisation in New York, warned that another five million infections were expected in the coming year, the majority in developing countries. The report showed that HIV/AIDS numbers had increased in every region of the world except the Caribbean, where numbers had remained stable.
Dr Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, said prevention efforts had led to gains in some countries. “But the reality is that the AIDS epidemic continues to outstrip global and national efforts to contain it,” he told a news conference in Delhi.
In Australia, 14,840 people are now estimated to be living with HIV infection. The UN report highlighted the increasing number of infections in Australia which were attributed to heterosexual sex – 27 percent of the 840 new infections reported in the last year were among heterosexuals.
In our region, the report highlights the threat posed to Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, where the HIV/AIDS epidemic appears to be rapidly spiralling out of control. Indonesia has between 90,000 and 200,000 people living with HIV and, of the 11,200 cases in Pacific nations, 10,000 were thought to be in PNG alone.
Piot, in Indonesia for World AIDS Day, said the country’s overall response was “certainly inadequate,” warning that the disease was spreading quickly among sex workers and injecting drug users and that insufficient government resources had been allocated to respond to the problem. The epidemic is spreading particularly rapidly in the Indonesian province of West Papua, he said.
Meanwhile, the head of the World Health Organisation’s HIV/AIDS program, Dr Jim-Yong Kim, has apologised for the failure of the organisation to achieve an ambitious goal of getting three million people on treatment by the end of this year. But despite missing the target, Dr Kim stressed that the program, dubbed ‘3x5’, was not a failure as it had increased access to treatment for many people who would otherwise be left to die.
“Before 3x5, there was not an emphasis on saving lives,” he said in an interview with the BBC. “Many leaders in the world were saying we just have to forget about this generation of people who are infected, we’re really thinking about the next generation.
“So something has happened that's extraordinary.”
