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Source: ONE News
More than half of the 9.5 million people who need AIDS drugs
cannot get them and 33 million people across the world are still
infected with the virus that causes it, a United Nations report
said.
Access to drugs, counselling and testing for AIDS has increased,
but there were still 2.7 million new infections in 2007 and the
human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS remains a major
challenge for global health, it said.
Teguest Guerma, an AIDS director at the Geneva-based World Health
Organisation, noted some progress - particularly in access to HIV
testing and counselling, and getting HIV drugs to pregnant women
and those in low- and middle-income countries.
But she said an internationally agreed goal of achieving universal
access to treatment by 2010 was unlikely to be hit and required
more concentrated effort.
"We're moving towards universal access, but we're not there yet,"
she said.
"We need to sustain the effort and commitment we have now to
move forward."
Since the AIDS pandemic started in the early 1980s, more than 25
million people have died from the virus.
There is no cure, but a cocktail of drugs known as highly active
antiretroviral therapy can help keep it under control.
According to the UNAIDS report, groups at high risk of infection,
including men who have sex with men, sex workers, drug users and
prisoners, still have limited access to HIV testing and counselling
services.
As a result, only 40% of all people estimated to have AIDS are
aware that they are infected.
Vaccine prospects
The report praised an unprecedented expansion of drug treatment in
low- and middle-income countries, where more than four million
people were receiving drugs by the end of 2008, up from around
three million a year earlier.
The greatest gains were seen in sub-Saharan Africa, where around
two-thirds of HIV infections occur.
Around 2.9 million people there received treatment in 2008,
compared with about 2.1 million in 2007.
Pregnant women, who can transmit the AIDS virus to their children,
also had better access to tests and drugs.
UNAIDS said 21% of pregnant women in low- and middle-income
countries had an HIV test in 2008, up from 15% in 2007, and 45% of
pregnant women with HIV got medicines.
Companies, non-profit groups and governments, have been working to
make a vaccine against the virus that causes AIDS, and experts
agree a vaccine is the only way to conquer it.
Michelle Childs, a director of Medecins Sans Frontieres' campaign
for access to essential medicines, said the five million patients
still going without AIDS drugs were particularly worrying because
of a looming funding crisis.
MSF said that with pressure on funding and rising costs of
second-line treatment -- for those who develop full-blown AIDS from
the virus - there was a need for sustainable solutions.
One option, it said, was to get the pharmaceutical companies to
pool their patents and agree to work together.
Trial results last week showed that for the first time, an
experimental AIDS vaccine protected people from the virus - but it
only lowered the infection rate by 30%.
"We need to continue the research because there is hope for the
discovery of a vaccine," the WHO's Guerma said.
"But for the time being, a vaccine with a modest efficacy cannot be used by itself."
