Well, for a change there's a little bit of good news in the world. The 2008 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic by the United Nations agency responsible for AIDS—UNAIDS—shows that efforts around the world are finally starting to pay off as there are declines in both the numbers of people being infected with, and dying from the virus. On top of that, the number of people living with AIDS has stabilized and more people are receiving proper treatment as well.
While Paul De Lay, Director of Evidence, Monitoring, and Policy at UNAIDS, said that the increased efforts in teaching people prevention methods are beginning to make a difference, as shown by the drop in the infection rate, he also cautioned that the epidemic was not over in any part of the world. The number of cases may be stabilizing— i.e. not showing any increases—but that number is still very high, and there are parts of the world and marginalized communities where the virus continues to run rampant. As an example, he cited the figure that two of every three new cases of AIDS occurs in the Sub-Saharan region of Africa.
Some of the figures the report cites show improvement on various fronts: actual number of people living with HIV/AIDS is 33 million, new infections are down to 2.7 million from 3 million in 2001, total deaths are down from 2.2 million in 2005 to 2 million in 2007, number of children infected is down from 410,000 to 370,000 in the same period, and the percentage of infected pregnant woman receiving anti-viral drugs has risen to 33% from 14% in those two years. They also show just how far we have to go in order to bring the disease under control. With a new infection rate of 2.7 million people each year and no cure in sight for the disease, it means that any let-up in prevention efforts could see the numbers spiraling upwards again.
An example of the breadth of the problem that's still being faced can be found in another figure quoted by Dr. De Lay: for every two new people receiving treatment in the world there are still five new people contracting the disease. Treatment is very expensive, and according to Purmina Mane, Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund, the cost to supply everybody currently infected with the disease would be 11 billion dollars American annually. That's a cost that will continue to rise substantially of course, unless something is done to reduce the annual infection rate.
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