A new report suggests that 50% of projected HIV infections by 2015 could be prevented if governments and donors increase their HIV expenditure to UNAIDS target levels and implement prevention programmes that have been proven to work. The Global HIV Prevention Working Group’s report, Bringing HIV Prevention to Scale: An Urgent Global Priority, shows that prevention efforts are not keeping pace with expanding access to antiretroviral therapy. For every person who started effective anti-HIV treatment in 2006, six become newly infected with the virus. It is estimated that there will be 60 million new HIV infections by 2015, but the report suggests that 30 million of these could be avoided if scientifically proven methods of HIV prevention were implemented.
Equity and HIV/AIDS
This presentation was made at the 10th Anniversary of the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation Centre at Warwick University; specifically in the session called Challenges of globalisation, regional integration and development of Africa. The presentation systematically dissected the following four key issues surrounding HIV and development challenges for Africa: the absence of one African epidemic (emphasis for each country/region to know epidemic and act on it); upstream effects (adressing structural drivers in Africa, poverty versus income equality, which might be more powerful?); downstream impact (specifically long wave impacts on poverty, GDP, human capital, social capital); and, finally, responding to the interaction between HIV and poverty.
A dramatic 41% decline in HIV prevalence has been reported in pregnant women in Zimbabwe, according to the latest survey done in this population. The results were reported in a poster presentation at the 47th Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in Chicago this week. Previous studies have suggested that HIV prevalence is on the decline among adults in Zimbabwe. This study only looked at pregnant women presenting to the Salvation Army Howard Hospital in the Mazowe district of rural northern Zimbabwe, but dramatically confirmed this decline in prevalence among these women.
The executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) urged action on the transmission of HIV to children through sexual abuse, incest and early teenage sex. Many outreach programmes target HIV-positive pregnant women and young children, and progress is being made in this arena, Peter Piot told IPS during a recent conference at Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA.
AIDS drugs, some of them contaminated, diluted, or faked, are being sold at flea markets and hairdressing salons in the face of growing shortages in clinics linked to Zimbabwe's economic crisis, the health ministry said. State media quoted Minister of Health David Parirenyatwa on Monday appealing to people living with HIV or AIDS to buy their medicines from registered pharmacies, clinics, and hospitals only. "These fake drugs increase chances of one becoming resistant to treatment, and it becomes even more expensive for that person to remain on treatment," he was quoted as saying by the official Herald newspaper, which said that the "prohibitive" cost of antiretroviral drugs at private pharmacies had fueled the illegal market.
Between 1990 and 2005, HIV prevalence rates in South Africa jumped from less than 1% to around 29%. Combining ethnographic, demographic and historical insights, this article addresses the important question posed recently by prominent South Africanist scholars: Was Aids in South Africa ‘an epidemic waiting to happen?’ To date, important responses to this question have forefronted the legacy of colonialism and apartheid in order to challenge cultural models that reify an ‘African system of sexuality’ supposedly characterised by sexual permissiveness (for instance as contained in Caldwell, Caldwell and Quiggin, 1989, for a direct critique see Heald, 1995). In particular, the work of social historians has brought to attention the ways in which racial segregation and male migration fuelled an earlier epidemic of syphilis only partially quelled by the introduction of penicillin in the 1950s; moreover, they note how the forces of urbanisation, industrialisation, and Christianisation have long been argued to have destabilised African family structures.
Patients who do not return for follow-up at clinics providing comprehensive HIV/AIDS care require special attention. This is particularly true where resources are limited and clinic loads are high. Data on a sample of patients who failed to return for follow-up were analysed to identify the causes and to plan strategies to overcome the problem.
The latest version of the Missing the Target report on AIDS treatment scale up offers a "no spin" assessment on treatment access -- the successes, challenges, and what needs to change at the national and global levels. The report points out that AIDS treatment delivery represents the best hope to build broader health systems -- but that we are in a new phase of treatment scale up where critical issues beyond simple delivery of ARVs require urgent attention. Governments and global institutions must act on the recommendations in our report to accelerate treatment delivery and address critical challenges in scale up. Without improved efforts, the world will fall short of new G8 AIDS commitments to deliver lifesaving HIV treatment and prevention services.
South African medical experts and activists on Monday warned that poor infection controls in public hospitals have caused dozens of babies to become infected with HIV. Treatment Action Campaign spokesperson Mark Heywood said he was aware of more than 40 such infections. 'The overall lack of inspection control policies, procedures, and budget means that the problem is probably more widespread,' he said. Shaheen Mehtar, head of infection prevention and control at Cape Town's Tygerberg Academic Hospital, said she personally knows of 24 infections in newborns. According to a report in the Cape Times daily newspaper, doctors blame the infections on HIV-tainted expressed breast milk being given to hospitalized babies, the re-use of syringes, and poor sterilization.
This progress report from the World Health Organisation (WHO) shows a steady increase in the global levels of access to antiretroviral therapy (ART) for people living with HIV. However, it shows less improvement in other priority areas of HIV treatment. The coverage rate for access to prophylactic ART by pregnant women, to prevent mother to child transmission of the virus, continues to be low. Similarly, the coverage of HIV counselling services and of interventions directed at intravenous drug users (IDUs) also remain at a low level. The report shows some improvement in the effective monitoring of HIV prevalence.