"World losing battle with HIV"

Isn't it funny with murder aids, war, famine, cancer, drunk driving fatalities... there are still a lot of fucking people every where you go?

 

I got 2 right.



"-There is a dormant strain of Aids that 90% of people world-wide have?"

What's this all about?

 

I only got 4 right.

 

That test astounded me. 90%, my God.

 

It is a very scary thought.

 

Where are all the supposed "educational efforts" on this? Are the only people really learning anything the victims & the medical profession?

 

As Nut said, it is still looked at as a disease for gays and blacks. Washington doesn't care.

 

A little more encouraging......,
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/31/world/31aids.html



Report Shows AIDS Epidemic Slowdown in 2005

By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
Published: May 31, 2006
UNITED NATIONS, May 30 — New surveys suggest that the global AIDS epidemic has begun to slow, with a decline in new H.I.V. infections in about 10 countries, the leader of the United Nations AIDS program said Tuesday.


Outside of those countries — which include Haiti, Cambodia, Kenya and Zimbabwe — the number of new AIDS infections continues to rise or hover at its current pace. Meanwhile, public health efforts are reaching only a small proportion of people at risk, Dr. Peter Piot, the executive director of Unaids, said at a news conference here on Tuesday.

"It's a very complex epidemic," he said. "We can no longer talk about AIDS" as a single epidemic, but as many diverse ones.

India, for example, is at about the same level as South Africa as the country with the largest number of H.I.V. infections. India has 5.7 million infected people and South Africa 5.5 million, but India's population is far greater. Showing no sign of decline, South Africa has a prevalence rate of about 19 percent of 47 million people. In India, the rate is less than 1 percent of its population of 1.1 billion.

The progress against AIDS in some regions represents dividends from a surge in financing since 2001, when the United Nations pledged its commitment to stem the epidemic by 2010. That declaration called for countries to report regularly on their responses to AIDS. This week, the General Assembly will review the progress that 126 countries have said they have made.

The report, the most comprehensive survey ever compiled from country data, pointed to the 2001 United Nations meeting as a turning point for AIDS financing. In 2005, the United States and the rest of the world spent $8.3 billion on AIDS, compared with $1.6 billion in 2001.

"We are seeing the impact," Dr. Piot said. "It's about time." He cited increased condom use, a rise in the postponement of sexual intercourse and a decrease in the number of sex partners as factors in the slowing of the epidemic.

Summarizing the report's findings, Dr. Piot said that "2005 was the least bad year in the history of the AIDS epidemic," first detected 25 years ago.

The most promising news, Dr. Piot said, is that the number of new H.I.V. infections has dropped in three African countries — Kenya, Zimbabwe and urban areas of Burkina Faso. Earlier, Uganda reported decreases.

Dr. Piot said Cambodia and four states in India (Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu) showed a drop in new infections, joining Thailand's earlier success.

In the Caribbean, the world's second-most-affected region behind Africa, new infections have declined in urban areas of Haiti and in the Bahamas. AIDS is the region's leading cause of death in people aged 15 to 44.

In Haiti, the percentage of pregnant women infected with H.I.V. declined to 3.7 percent in 2003-2004 from 9.4 percent in 1993, Dr. Piot said.

Despite the positive trends, Dr. Piot reported grim findings from China, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Russia and Vietnam, with signs of outbreaks in Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Ending the pandemic will depend largely on changing social norms like empowering women, reducing the stigma of the disease and encouraging a greater reduction in the number of sex partners, the report said. Most countries have strong foundations for building an effective response against AIDS, the report said, but systems to carry out the plans remain inconsistent.

The thoroughness of the individual national reports varied, and many countries did not provide data for all categories, so summarizing them was difficult, Dr. Piot said in an interview. Still, the replies identified significant weaknesses, he said:

¶Fewer than 50 percent of young people achieved comprehensive knowledge levels about H.I.V., far fewer than the 90 percent goal.

¶Only 9 percent of gay men and fewer than 20 percent of intravenous drug users received any kind of H.I.V. prevention help in 2005.

¶Services to prevent H.I.V. infections in infants have not scaled up as rapidly as programs to provide antiretroviral therapy. Just 9 percent of pregnant women were covered.



The United States, Britain, Canada, France and Germany gave no statistics on surveys about the percentage of young people who correctly identify ways to prevent H.I.V.; who had sex with casual partners in the last year; who had sex before 15; or who used condoms during the most recent sexual intercourse with casual partners.

Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, the United Nations Population Fund executive director, said the world needed to increase its prevention efforts.

The report shows that the epicenter of the epidemic remains in sub-Saharan Africa. There the epidemic has reached a peak, but incidence remains unacceptably high, Dr. Piot said. Across most of Africa, H.I.V. prevalence among pregnant women attending clinics has remained roughly level for several years.

The United Nations disputed contentions by some observers that the leveling off showed a turning point in the AIDS epidemic in Africa. "Available evidence does not offer grounds for such conclusions," Dr. Piot said, in part because "the actual number of people infected continues to rise because of population growth."

 

makes me scared for the generations to come

 

I saw that. They are trying to stop any sort of panic world-wide. Just because the number of deaths may have gone down in some countries, the number of HIV+ people didn't.