HEADQUARTERS PRESS CONFERENCE BY NEW YORK OFFICE OF UNAIDS

The world continued to face a worsening AIDS epidemic, according to Dr. Desmond Johns, New York representative for the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), who briefed correspondents at Headquarters this afternoon on the launch of the new AIDS Epidemic Update:  December 2001.

According to that report, Dr. Johns said, there were 3 million deaths in the past year, 5 million new infections, and perhaps a total of 40 million currently living with HIV/AIDS.  The report, from UNAIDS and the World Health Organization (WHO), is being issued in advance of World Aids Day, which is observed on December 1.

Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union were currently the sites of the worst escalation, Dr. Johns said, with around a 15-fold increase in the number of estimated cases of HIV infection in just three years.  The situation there was particularly worrying because it affected predominantly young people, who were experimenting with intravenous drug use and sex.

Asia, for the first time, had seen the occurrence of more than 1 million new cases in a calendar year.  While the prevalence remained low in such large populations, even a one per cent rate turned out to be a lot of people.  The low rates were also misleading as they masked high rates among certain local populations, for example commercial sex workers and intravenous drug users.

In Africa, the picture remained bleak, he said, with an estimated 

3.4 million new cases.  That figure represented a slight decrease from the previous year.  However, in some parts of Swaziland, South Africa and Botswana, more than 30 per cent of the adult population was estimated to be infected.  In West Africa, where there were previously low rates of around one or two          per cent, new data indicated prevalence of around five per cent or greater, including in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country.

In North America and Western Europe, the overall levels remained low but there was a concern over the resurgence of high-risk behaviour.  There were an estimated 75,000 new cases of infection in the developed world over the past year.

All figures he had mentioned, Dr. Johns said by way of clarification, referred to people who were infected with the HIV virus.  It was not limited to people who exhibited symptoms of AIDS-related diseases, which could take years to manifest themselves.

A correspondent asked what could be done to keep political considerations from hampering aid to HIV/AIDS programmes, as in the case of Haiti.  Dr. Johns replied that allowing such considerations to affect humanitarian or health aid was self-defeating.  Lower-cost, early public health intervention prevented the need to dedicate far greater resources to the problem when it grew.  But such political obstacles were outside his purview.

Asked about the relationship between HIV/AIDS and development, he said that the AIDS epidemic had been increasingly seen as a development problem

because it had roots in social ills such as poverty, exclusion and social stigmatization.  As far as effects on development were concerned, he said a report from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) had estimated that eight percentage points of prevalence translated into negative gross domestic product growth of one per cent. 

In conclusion, Dr. Johns announced that the United Nations would be observing World AIDS Day on Friday ,30 November from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. in Conference Room 4.  The event would not only be a commemoration of victims, but a celebration of life as well.  It was also “a chance for those of us who have been involved in the epidemic for some time to rededicate and reinvigorate our efforts”, he said.

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