Source: Chicago Tribune, SABC News, Bloomberg, AFP, China Daily
As thousands of HIV/AIDS researchers, health-care providers, and activists gathered for a major conference, the US Centers for Disease Control released new findings that indicate the AIDS epidemic in the U.S. is far worse than previously reported.
About 56,300 people in the US are now thought to be infected with HIV annually -- a startling 40 percent jump from the government's previous estimate of 40,000.
The findings were released as over 30,000 delegates joined world leaders in Mexico City at the 17th International AIDS Conference to review the progress they've made in fighting the global HIV/AIDS epidemic.
More than 22,000 scientists, policymakers, and field workers are attending, making it the second largest conference in the history of the disease, and the largest in a developing country, AFP reports.
Delegates were told that the disease among gay men in the US and throughout the world remains a challenge that should not be ignored.
Speaking yesterday at the opening ceremonies of the conference, UN chief Ban Ki-moon was one of several world leaders and health officials who spoke about the need for targeting the epidemic among gay men, Bloomberg reports.
Margaret Chan, head of the World Health Organization's China unit, said health officials in all nations, including the U.S., need to acknowledge setbacks in a group that pioneered the earliest response to the disease. In the U.S., infections among gay men have risen 75 percent in 15 years, according to the CDC report.
"We need to engage them, we need to take care of them, we should not forget about them," Chan said, referring to the gay community worldwide.
A report released today by the American Foundation for AIDS Research or AMFAR suggests the group originally at most risk of the fatal and incurable virus -- gay and bisexual men -- remain at highest risk, even as the pandemic has broadened to affect women and children, China Daily reports.
"The failure of the Global Fund (for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria), PEPFAR (the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), The World Bank, and the world's other global health bodies to devote significant resources toward reducing HIV rates among MSM is indefensible," said AMFAR CEO Kevin Frost.
"These organizations have policies on women, drug users, migration -- but not one of them has a comprehensive policy on MSM."
Men who have sex with men are 19 times more likely to be infected with HIV than the general population, yet are ignored in many countries, AmFAR said in the study.
A global conference was to get down to business on Monday after hearing that victory against the disease lay beyond the farthest horizon and endangered lives could only be saved with inflows of money.
Funding, access to treatment, beefing up prevention against the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and an array of social evils from stigma to violence against women are the headline issues at the six-day parlay.
The new figures on US infection rates released Saturday by the CDC represent improved assessments, not evidence that infection rates are going up, officials said.
But the news had AIDS advocacy groups in the US calling for additional funding to combat the outbreak among gay men and African-Americans, among whom cases of infection are increasing fastest, the study shows. Advocates also called for a national strategy to combat the epidemic, Chicago Tribune reports.
In the U.S., the government has pushed a broad message targeting everyone, rather than focusing on the hardest hit populations, said Phil Curtis, director of government affairs at AIDS Project Los Angeles. He said there needs to be at least another $1 billion in prevention funding and more precise messaging to address the gay community, Bloomberg reports.
The failure to slow HIV in gay men puts the U.S. alongside countries in Asia and Africa that aren't confronting the disease in this population, AmFAR's Frost said.
"What the CDC data did was illuminate just how poorly we're doing,'' he said in an interview at the conference, Bloomberg reports. "We're doing a lousy job of recognizing the depth of the epidemic in men having sex with men, and targeting our resources so we can change the trajectory of the epidemic."
The new numbers from the CDC, compiled in 2006, were derived from a sophisticated blood test that determines when a patient was infected. Previous studies depended on a medical diagnosis that did not give the time frame of infection, making it difficult to compile yearly data.
"We have not been able to see the leading edge of the epidemic," Dr. Kevin Fenton, director of the National Center for HIV/AIDS, said Saturday in a conference call with reporters.
The first day of the Mexico City conference was dominated by human rights issues that affect people living with the HIV virus and other vulnerable groups.
The 17th International AIDS Conference is the first to take place in Latin America, a region with entrenched stigma against people with HIV, AFP reports.
This year, South Africa has been singled out as an example of a country that has been able to deal better with HIV because respects human rights, SABC reports.
Chivananda Khan from the International Gay & Lesbian Rights Movement said: "South Africa led the way. Its constitution has made it explicit that gay and lesbian men and trans-gender people are part of the citizenship of South Africa. We need those sorts of constitutions and laws that protect us from violence."
At the conference, Mexican President Felipe Calderon Hinojosa, former Botswana President Festus Mogae and President of St. Kitts and Nevis Denzil Douglas each called for the end of discrimination against gay men in a news conference at the meeting. Mogae and Douglas said they'll work with leaders in Africa and the Caribbean to create new prevention programs.
More than a quarter of gay men in these regions, including Jamaica, Kenya, and Ghana, are infected, according to the United Nations. Despite a quarter-century of activism and awareness, gay populations have been overlooked because of discrimination and criminalization in some countries, said Peter Piot, the executive director of New York-based UNAIDS, the agency that coordinates care and research.
The AMFAR report identified Kenya, Jamaica, Benin, Thailand, and Ghana as the countries with the highest reported percentage of gay and bisexual men infected with HIV, China Daily reports.
Although data was scarce, the report found that men who had sex with other men were 18 times more likely to be infected with HIV than the general population in Asia and at least four times more likely in Africa.
In Latin America, gay and bisexual men were 33 times more likely to be infected with HIV than the general population. In Bolivia, they were 179 times more likely to be infected.
About 33 million people are infected with the AIDS virus worldwide, and 2.7 million of them contracted HIV, the virus that causes the disease, last year, according to a report from UNAIDS. The number of deaths dropped by about 10 percent to 2 million, the report said.
Most of the 179 countries reporting to the United Nations on the epidemic make no mention of the virus in gay me
The AMFAR report identified Kenya, Jamaica, Benin, Thailand, and Ghana as the countries with the highest reported percentage of gay and bisexual men infected with HIV.
Although data was scarce, the report found that men who had sex with other men were 18 times more likely to be infected with HIV than the general population in Asia and at least four times more likely in Africa.
In Latin America, gay and bisexual men were 33 times more likely to be infected with HIV than the general population. In Bolivia, they were 179 times more likely to be infected.
Most of the 179 countries reporting to the United Nations on the epidemic make no mention of the virus in gay men, AmFAR's Frost said.
For the report released today, AMFAR trawled through 128 country reports submitted to the United Nations AIDS agency UNAIDS to find that 44 percent of those countries failed to provide any data on gay or bisexual men.
The study concluded that governments and global health agencies have failed to address the growing HIV epidemic among men who have sex with other men -- referred to widely among AIDS experts as MSM.
Source: AIDS epidemic in U.S. 'worse than previously known | Chicago Tribune
Stigma and discrimination remains AIDS challenge | SABC News
AIDS Prevention Focus Returns to Gay Men at Mexico Conference | Bloomberg
War on AIDS will be long, more funds needed: UN | AFP
Study: gay, bisexual men still at high risk for HIV | China Daily