Global AIDS Epidemic Has Stabilized

by Aimee Amodio | More from this Blogger

27 Aug 2008 07:36 PM

According to the United Nations AIDS agency -- UNAIDS -- the epidemic has stabilized. Fewer people are dying of AIDS and more patients are on HIV medication.

The good news:

• The global AIDS epidemic peaked in the late 1990s and deaths from AIDS are on the decline. Approximately two million people died from AIDS in 2007, down from 2.2 million in 2005.
• AIDS work in the past five years has done more than work in the last two decades, according to UNAIDS.
• The number of people on medication for HIV has increased dramatically in the last six years -- only three hundred thousand in 2003 compared with three million in 2007.
• AIDS medications are cheaper and more widely available thanks to hard work from a variety of government and private programs.

The bad news:

• The estimated number of AIDS cases around the world is 33 million. That's still a HUGE number.
• Countries in sub-Saharan Africa are the center of the epidemic. This area (which includes South Africa, Botswana, and Swaziland) has approximately two-thirds of all people infected with HIV and more than seventy percent of all AIDS deaths.
• Millions of people still don't have access to medications for HIV.
• HIV and AIDS are on the rise in China, Germany, Indonesia, Russia, and Great Britain.

This mix of good and bad news is evidence that the fight against AIDS isn't over yet. Governments will need to keep budgeting millions of dollars for AIDS treatments in years to come as patients live longer. UNAIDS fears there may be future waves of the epidemic that counteract the current stabilization.

The U.S. government set a good example by tripling the amount of money it will spend on AIDS and other diseases around the world over the next five years. Experts believe that AIDS programs need to focus on two things: getting medication to everyone who needs it and increasing prevention programs.

Will we see an end to AIDS someday? I hope so.

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Aimee is a fiction writer... dog lover... music lover...

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