Three million people in poor and middle income countries were taking drugs to treat AIDS at the end of 2007, a conference of 1700 doctors and health experts in Kampala heard last week.
The 2008 HIV/AIDS Implementers’ Meeting also heard that the world population of people with HIV fell from 39.5 to 33.2 million between 2006 and 2007. The number of newly infected people in 2007 was 2.5 million, down from 3.2 million in 1998.
These figures were in a report produced jointly by the World Health Organization, UNAIDS, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.
But delegates at the meeting thought that these achievements could not be sustained unless more emphasis was put on programmes that concentrate on reducing the spread of AIDS.
They emphasised that prevention programmes in sub-Saharan Africa needed to be reignited. AIDS in this region accounts for 68% of all adults with HIV, 90% of the world’s HIV infected children, and 76% of all HIV deaths in 2007.
“We have to come up with more robust measures to stop the epidemic, especially in Africa. It is absolutely crucial to strengthen the capacity for prevention,” Helen Evans, the deputy executive director for the Global Fund, told the BMJ.
“We have got to stop the epidemic. AIDS is now more of a chronic disease than a direct way to death. We need to be serious about prevention. Each country should provide priorities geared at prevention,” Ms Evans said.
Almost 60 specialist committee meetings at the conference explored various aspects of AIDS work, including epidemiology, palliative care, the rights and nutritional needs of patients, coordination of programmes, the plight of sexually abused patients, and funding.
Michel Sidibe, deputy executive director of UNAIDS, said, “We need to deal with preventive measures, and unless we link these measures with community based programmes it will be difficult to catch up with the epidemic.”
Despite the positive news about a reduction in new cases of AIDS, the United Nations’ agencies at the meeting observed that “everyday over 6800 persons become infected with HIV and over 5700 persons die from AIDS, mostly because of inadequate access to HIV prevention and treatment services.”
UN officials also argued that treating patients with AIDS is more costly than containing the spread of HIV. Another UNAIDS official, George Tembo, told the BMJ, “We have seen costs of treatment being far higher than those of prevention. It is extremely crucial to strengthen the capacity for prevention.”
