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News on HIV/AIDS

Source: WHO, EIP Discussion paper 36, 2000



New! 2008 Report on the global AIDS epidemic

The new report on the global AIDS epidemic reports on the latest developments in the global AIDS epidemic.

New! The World Bank's Commitment to HIV/AIDS in Africa 2007-11

The Action Plan is a road map for the next five years. It underscores lessons learned to date and identifies actions the World Bank will need to take to ensure it can respond to the demands of member countries and other partners for financial, technical, analytical, and collaborative support The Bank says it is moving away from its initial ‘emergency response’ role as the world’s principal financier of HIV programmes, towards a new mission with four new strategic objectives. These include: at global level, advising countries on how best to manage the complexity of the international financing they receive; and at local level, helping countries to accelerate implementation and take a long-term sustainable development response to HIV; strengthening the monitoring and evaluation capacity of countries to track the efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency of their AIDS response; and building up stronger health and financial systems.

This new UNAIDS report demonstrates the diversity of the AIDS epidemics in Asia and the need for countries to understand what is driving their epidemics and how to reach populations most at risk of HIV infection. UNAIDS and WHO are urged to recommend a new classification based on the risk factors and burden of disease for low and concentrated epidemic countries. The report also makes a series of strong recommendations for national governments around leadership, resource commitment, strategic information and community involvement.

According to the new report ultimate success in defeating HIV/AIDS will depend on marshalling effective prevention, care, and treatment - measures to boost 'social immune systems' in African countries—changing their beliefs, perceptions, and social and individual behaviors around the disease so that eventually they can reverse the advance of HIV and stop the damage done by AIDS. The report says these changes are taking place as the epidemic shows signs of slowing in Uganda, Kenya, and Zimbabwe, and in urban Ethiopia, Rwanda, Burundi, Malawi, and Zambia. But Southern Africa remains the epicenter of the continent's epidemic with unprecedented infection rates. In Eastern Africa, countries are facing a mixed epidemic pattern with significant numbers of new infections originating in the commercial sex trade, and in the general population.

The 2007 AIDS epidemic update reports on the latest developments in the global AIDS epidemic. The 2007 edition provides the most recent estimates of the AIDS epidemic and explores new findings and trends in the epidemic’s evolution.

Asian Development Bank (ADB) published in 2007 this report made by EASE. The report is one in a series of IDUs in Asian countries made in a collaboration with ADB.

New! The Impact of an AIDS vaccine in Developing Countries: A new Model and Preliminary Results

There are over 40 million people living with HIV worldwide, and curent prevention efforts are not sufficient to turn the tide of the pandemic. Vaccines are consistently among the best tools for fighting infectious diseases. IAVI has created an Impact Model to explore the impact of a vaccine. Questions concerning the effectiveness, the need for at vaccine if existing prevention programs and ART are significantly expanded, a long with the impact of first generation vaccines will be discussed in the report.

According to the report, there is increasing evidence of HIV outbreaks among men who have sex with men in Cambodia, China, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Thailand and Viet Nam as well as across Latin America but most national AIDS programmes fail to address the specific needs of these people. New data also show that HIV prevention programmes are failing to address the overlap between injecting drug use and sex work within the epidemics of Latin America, Eastern Europe and particularly Asia. The report also highlights that levels of knowledge of safe sex and HIV remain low in many countries, as well as perception of personal risk. Even in countries where the epidemic has a very high impact, such as Swaziland and South Africa, a large proportion of the population do not believe they are at risk of becoming infected.

This Blueprint outlines a series of initiatives, improving the pipeline through rational vaccine desing and enhanced scientific empiricism efforts; accelerating product testing by creating a new paradigm for AIDS vaccine clinical trials; and building capacity, particularly in developing countries - that will speed the development of an AIDS vaccine for the world.

According to new data in the UNAIDS 2006 Report on the global AIDS epidemic the AIDS epidemic appears to be slowing down globally, but new infections are continuing to increase in certain regions and countries. The report also shows that important progress has been made in country AIDS responses, including increases in funding and access to treatment, and decreases in HIV prevalence among young people in some countries over the past five years.
Furthermore, the report contains country progress indicators from 126 different countries.

From the 2006 high-level meeting on AIDS, United Nations, New York.

The primary goal of this paper from UNAIDS is to energize an intensification of HIV prevention with an ultimate aim of universal access to HIV prevention and treatment. It identifies what needs to be done to bridge the HIV prevention gap and ensure the sustainability af HIV treatment scale-up in the present context.

The AIDS 2005 Epidemic Update Report shows that adult HIV rates have decreased in certain countries, and that changes in behaviour to prevent infection have played a key part in these declines. Despite decreases in the rate of infection in certain countries, the overall number of people living with HIV has continued to increase in all regions of the world, except the Carribean. The number of people living with HIV globally has reached its highest level with an estimated 40.3 million people (from 37.5 million in 2003). The steepest increases in HIV infections have occurred in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (25% increase to 1.6 million) and East Asia. Sub-Saharan Africa continues to be the most affected globally, with 64% infections occurring here (>3 million people).

The report is a detailed review of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and surveillance practices in the 46 countries of the WHO African region and gives the most recent update of the HIV/AIDS situation in this part of the world. While Africa remains the region most affected by HIV/AIDS, there is encouraging news that more countries are observing a decline in HIV prevalence among pregnant women attending antenatal clinics (ANC).

This Global HIV/AIDS Program of Action describes how the World Bank Group will work over the coming three years to strengthen the response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic at country, regional, and global levels, through lending, grants, analysis, technical support and policy dialogue. The Program links global and national efforts and builds partnerships with civil society, and people living with HIV/AIDS. It builds on the “Three Ones”principles, agreed with our development partners, which call for one national HIV/AIDS authority, one national strategic plan and one monitoring and evaluation system. There is an urgent need to do more and to do it better, so that the results of our efforts can be counted in millions of infections prevented, millions of people with HIV/AIDS living more productive, healthy lives, and millions of children, so heartlessly orphaned by the disease, being properly cared for.

This IAVI report suggests that even a modestly effective AIDS vaccine could slash the number of new infections by a third. The paper also highlights the importance of combining a vaccine with existing HIV prevention activities such as condom promotion with vaccination in order to maximize their joint impact. The analysis is part of a larger effort to document the need for an AIDS vaccine and the benefits that are likely to result from widespread implementation. Such an effort is particularly important now to ensure that the needed investments are made today even though a vaccine may only become available a number of years in the future.

This IAVI report is a literature review of how HIV/AIDS have effects on other important health issues and thus impacts on the achivements of other MDGs. The report presents key findings of how HIV/AIDS affects poverty; the nutrional status of children; education; child mortality; and tuberculosis.

To download the complete report click here: AIDS and the Millennium Development Goals
To download a summary of the report click here: AIDS and the Millennium Development Goals