Threat of a global heterosexual pandemic of HIV officially disappear
It has been a busy week on the HIV/AIDS front. One of the most important news came from Kevin de Cock, the head of the WHO’s department of HIV/Aids who said that there will be no generalised epidemic of Aids in the heterosexual population outside Africa.
As I am reaching the end of The Wisdom of Whores, I feel that Elizabeth Pisani vindicated by the official recognition that the universal prevention strategy promoted by the major Aids organisations may have been misdirected.
The Independent on Sunday quoted Dr De Cock the epidemiologist heading the HIV-AIDS program with the World Health Organisation saying: “It is very unlikely there will be a heterosexual epidemic in other countries. Ten years ago a lot of people were saying there would be a generalised epidemic in Asia – China was the big worry with its huge population. That doesn’t look likely. But we have to be careful. As an epidemiologist it is better to describe what we can measure. There could be small outbreaks in some areas.”
Let’s not rejoice too quickly or gloat at the world’s effort to fight what remains “the leading infectious disease challenge in global health” as described by Dr De Cock. There are still about 2.5 million people becoming newly infected each year.
The most important outcome from the realisation that an heterosexual HIV pandemic is, for now, out of the radar, is that at last people most at risk may finally get the attention they need, i.e. injecting drug users, sex workers and male who have sex with male (MSM).
Recent developments in Uganda which in the past had led the fight against HIV but now arrest activists and compiled “catalogues [...] of people [the authorities] think are involved in perpetuating the vice of homosexuality”, foretell that this is not going to be easy and that the fight is far form over.
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This should contribute to make Roger England’s paper published in the BMJ last month more prominent on the HIV stage.
In the paper, England states that too much international aid money is being spent on HIV compared with other diseases which kill more people. The paper reports that globally HIV causes 3.7 per cent of mortality but received 25 per cent of health aid and argues that money would be better spent on improving health systems within countries.
The writing is on the wall for UNAIDS
Roger England. BMJ 336:1072, 2008.
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/336/7652/1072
One step forward and one step backward, on 11 June 2008, UNAIDS issued a statement to correct what was not said in the IoS article, i.e.:
First and foremost, the global HIV epidemic is by no means over. At the end of 2007, an estimated 33.2 million people were living with HIV. Some 2.5 million people became newly infected that year, and 2.1 million died of AIDS. AIDS remains the leading cause of death in Africa.
Worldwide, HIV is still largely driven by heterosexual transmission. The majority of new infections in sub-Saharan Africa occur through heterosexual transmission. We have also seen a number of generalized epidemics outside of Africa, such as in Haiti and Papua New Guinea.
This corrective statement conflates “the threat” of a world pandemic” with the existing “African Pandemic”.
It would be good if KdC could confirnm if “It is very unlikely there will be a heterosexual epidemic in other countries. Ten years ago a lot of people were saying there would be a generalised epidemic in Asia – China was the big worry with its huge population. That doesn’t look likely. But we have to be careful. As an epidemiologist it is better to describe what we can measure. There could be small outbreaks in some areas.”
[...] Kevin de Cock, the epidemiologist heading the HIV-AIDS program with the World Health Organisation, briefly acknowledge, before recanting, that the threat of an heterosexual AIDS pandemic outside of Africa had [...]
[...] Kevin de Cock, the epidemiologist heading the HIV-AIDS program with the World Health Organisation, briefly acknowledged, before recanting, that the threat of an heterosexual AIDS pandemic outside of Africa had [...]
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