The HIV/AIDS epidemic is particularly acute in portions or Asia and Africa, and the Caribbean boasts -- if that's quite the right word -- the fastest growth in cases outside sub-Saharan Africa.
The global AIDS epidemic spread at an alarming pace last year with a record 4.8 million new infections, according to a U.N. report released Tuesday, which expressed concern that the virus is spreading quickly in Eastern Europe and Asia. Issued in advance of the 15th International AIDS Conference, which opens Sunday in Bangkok, the report said that governments were not doing enough to prevent the spread of AIDS. Only one in five people worldwide have access to prevention programs, it said.
Sub-Saharan Africa continued to have the world's highest incidence of AIDS, the report said. But Eastern Europe and Central Asia are suffering from the fastest rate of growth in HIV infections, U.N. officials said. HIV is the virus that causes AIDS. In Asia, prevention has been inadequate "partly because of stigma and discrimination," the report said. There were success stories in Thailand and Cambodia, where prevention programs deal more openly with high-risk behavior, such as intravenous drug use and prostitution, said the U.N. report, which warned against "complacency."
The UN might well warn against "complacency", since that appears to be part of what's driving an increase in risky behaviors in this country.
HIV antiretroviral drugs are available to most of the estimated 1.6 million infected people in so-called high-income countries, including the United States. There were 950,000 people with HIV in the United States at the end of last year, 50,000 more than in 2001, the report said. [...] In high-income countries such as the United States, experts are concerned about the resurgence of sexually transmitted infections and high-risk behaviors, such as having unprotected sex. "People are dropping their guard and that will have its consequences," Cravero said.
Of course, part of the problem is that many of those engaging in this behavior are simply too young to remember; after all, it's been 20 years since AIDS appeared. Time for an entirely new generation to become sexually active, and reinvent sex in their own image. Another part of the problem is that the protease inhibitors make HIV/AIDS appear to be a chronic, survivable disease, much like diabetes, for example. (Somehow, the side effects of the drug, like unavoidable explosive diarrhea or chronic anemia, or the fact that a substantial number of people simply can't tolerate the drugs, never quite makes it into the consciousness.) And many of us who are old enough to remember are just tired. Tired of always thinking of sex as a deadly weapon, more or less. Tired of always having to think about sex and disease prevention, instead of treating it as something fun.
And so the rate here will rise due to carelessness and exhaustion, and the rate there will rise due to poverty and inability to act on any information they do have.
Posted by iain at July 07, 2004 12:34 PM
