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News on HIV/AIDS

Source: WHO, EIP Discussion paper 36, 2000


New! Putting it Together. AIDS and the Millennium Development Goals

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

The present report of the Secretary-General draws on a broad range of data sources, including national data on key AIDS indicators from 17 countries and territories in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Eastern Europe,1 other national surveys, commissioned studies and evidence-based estimates of coverage for key AIDS interventions. It tracks the current state of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and summarizes overall progress made in realizing the commitments set out in the Declaration, with a special focus on those set out for 2005.

This review from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) draws on a detailed evidence base of over 150 studies encompassing various disciplines (including nutrition, economics, epidemiology, and sociology). The review builds a picture of what is known about the interactions between HIV/AIDS and food and nutrition security, and what this knowledge implies for food- and nutrition-relevant policy. Summaries of all studies are provided in annexes for easy reference.
Click here for the full report

The Mobil Task Team (MTT) on the impact of HIV/AIDS on Education has just completed a study into Educator Attrition and Mortality Rates in South Africa (1997/98 to 2003/04), for the Education Labour Relations Council. The purpose of the study is to estimate gross educator attrition and mortality, rates and trends, including an analysis of the causes of these by age and gender, in the public schools system in South Africa. This study is the first analysis of educator attrition and mortality based on actual and real data from government sources, and not on models or projections.

This UNAIDS report presents three possible case studies for how the AIDS epidemic in Africa could evolve over the next 20 years based on policy decisions taken today by African leaders and the rest of the world. The scenarios set out to answer one central question: "Over the next 20 years, what factors will drive Africa's and the world's responses to the AIDS epidemic, and what kind of future will there be for the next generation?"

This task force paper is a part of the UN Millennium Project and underscores the importance of scaling up both essential HIV prevention services and antiretroviral treatment. Only urget expansion of treatment can prolong the lives of the nearly 40 million people who already carry the HIV virus - and will limite the social and economic devastation their deaths would cause. Only reinvigorated and expanded prevention can ultimately bring the epidemic under control. In the hardest-hit countries, much more must also be done to mitigate the impact of the epidemic, especially on orphans and other vulnarably children. The key to scaling up HIV/AIDS services, especially antiretroviral treatment, will be sustained investment in health systems, especially the health care work force.

The AIDS 2004 Epidemic Update Report shows that the number of women living with HIV has risen in each region of the world over the past two years, with the steepest increases in East Asia, followed by Eastern Europe and Central Asia. In East Asia, there was a 56% increase over the past two years, followed by Eastern Europe and Central Asia with 48%.

London, 6 July 2004: The number of people living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, has risen in every region of the world and last year five million people became newly infected with HIV—more people than any previous year. These findings are contained in the 2004 UNAIDS Report of the global AIDS epidemic, released today in advance of the XV International AIDS Conference, to be held in Bangkok from 11-16 July 2004.

Geneva, July 2004: This WHO report on scaling up of HIV/AIDS treatment and acceleration of prevention includes an overview of antiretroviral therapy needs and targets for the 49 "3 by 5" focus countries.

This article presents the results form a randomized trial of multivitamin supplements and HIV disesase progression and mortality conducted in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The study shows that multivitamin supplements delay the progression of HIV disease and provide an effective, low-cost means of delaying the initiation of antiretroviral therapy in HIV-infected women.

June, 2004: The UNAIDS Progress report 2003 catalogues the expansion of the work of UNAIDS at regional and country levels. The first section outlines the strategiv framework for action, Directions for the future, the status of its implementation, the associated capacity strengthning of UNAIDS at country level and challenges for 2004 and the next biennium. The second section reviews UNAIDS Country and Regional Support Department (CRD) efforts to translate global initiatives into results at country level and the third section reviews regional progress towards implementing the strategic framework for action. The report concludes with a collection of two-page country situation and progress summaries for 70 of the 134 countries with the UN Theme Groups on HIV/AIDS.

This Lancet article focuses on the validity of UNAIDS/WHO estimates of the burden of HIV/AIDS, estimates which are rightly questioned by politicians, scientists, and activists - especially since the 2003 estimates to be released in July, 2004, will show substantial drops in the burden of HIV/AIDS in several countries, and increases in others. The article describes the levels of uncertainty associated with the UNAIDS/WHO estimates of HIV/AIDS and explains the reason for moving to the use of plausibility bounds, the factors that determine the width of the bounds, and the implications for policy makers and programme managers.

June 2004: This report by USAID, UNAIDS, WHO, UNICEF and the POLICY Project focuses on the coverage of selected services for HIV/AIDS prevention, care and support in low and middle income countries, including voluntary counseling and testing (VCT), prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT) and access to antiretroviral therapy. The report includes results from 73 countries.

Geneva, May 11, 2004. This year's World Health Report, "Changing History", calls for a comprehensive HIV/AIDS strategy that links prevention, treatment, care and long-term support. The long-term economic and social costs of HIV/AIDS have been seriously underestimated in many countries, the report says. Projections now suggest that some countries in sub-Saharan Africa will face economic collapse unless they bring their epidemics under control, mainly because HIV/AIDS weakens and kills adults in their prime - depriving communities of doctors, teachers and lawyers, as well as farmers, miners and police officers, and depriving children of their parents. By using HIV treatment programs to strengthen existing prevention programs and improve health systems, the international community has a unique opportunity to change the course of history, says the World Health Report 2004.

In a report released on 17 February 2004, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) offers the first comprehensive profile of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 28 countries of East and South Eastern Europe, the Baltics and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and provides a platform for the discussion of policy options available to halt the spread of the disease. The report offers HIV/AIDS profiles for the countries of the region, describes high-risk groups and the behaviours that make them vulnerable to infection, and discusses why human rights is an essential ingredient for fighting the epidemic. Despite a comparatively low prevalence in the region, growth rates in new HIV infections reported over the last several years in Estonia, Russia and Ukraine are among the world's highest. Upwards of one out of every one hundred adults living in these three countries is now estimated to be carrying the virus - a threshold above which efforts to turn back the epidemic have failed in many other countries.

HIV/AIDS is on the rise in Central Asia.The five countries in this sub-region - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan - are experiencing a worrying spread in HIV/AIDS. Newly reported infections jumped from 88 in 1995 to 6,706 in 2003, primarily in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic and Uzbekistan. This counts only registered cases, so actual figures are probably much higher. Indeed, all data point to a rapidly growing epidemic with a dramatic increase in the numbers and rates of infection from 1996 to 2001. These findings are highlighted in a new World Bank study, HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis in Central Asia: Country Profiles.

Based on 22 cohorts of people infected with HIV-1 in Europe, Australia and Canada this Lancet article argues that the predicted survival for people with HIV-1 has continued to increase, since the introduction of HAART; however, the importance of age and exposure category as determinants of progression seems to have changed.

The Eastern Europe and Central Asia Region is experiencing the world’s fastest-growing HIV/AIDS epidemic.This Regional Support Strategy translates the Bank’s corporate commitment into an agenda for action in the Eastern Europe and Central Asia Region. The report presents how the Bank is approaching the problem in the region, describes the scope of the epidemic, and examines financial as well as sociopolitical and institutional constraints that impede success in fighting HIV/AIDS in ECA.

The central conclusions of this World Bank paper are that the AIDS epidemic will peak far in advance of the economic damage it will ultimately cause and the scale of that damage, in terms of accumulated losses in GDP per capita, will be large.