Aids has hit sub-Saharan Africa so badly that the disease will cast a shadow over generations to come, even in countries that succeed in the battle against it, the United Nations warned on Tuesday.
Africans account for about 25,4-million of the 39,4-million people around the world who have either the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) or Aids, the UN’s World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNAids said in an annual report.
“HIV infection is becoming endemic in sub-Saharan Africa,” said the Aids Epidemic Update, released ahead of World Aids Day on December 1.
“Current high prevalence levels mean that even those countries that do eventually reverse the epidemic’s course will have to contend with serious Aids epidemics for many subsequent years. The havoc wrought by Aids will shape the lives of several generations of Africans.”
The good news is that East Africa has seen modest declines in HIV prevalence among pregnant women, and levels have stayed steady in Central and West Africa. This has helped keep the continent’s HIV prevalence to 7,4% of the adult population, compared to 7,5% in 2003.
On the downside, HIV prevalence among expectant mothers has risen sharply in southern Africa from five percent in 1990 to more than 25% this year.
Southern Africa is “the worst affected sub-region in the world,” the report declared bluntly.
Around 11,4-million people in the nine countries that make up this sub-region live with HIV or acquired immune deficiency syndrome (Aids), representing “almost 30% of the global number of people living with HIV in an area where only two percent of the world’s total population resides,” the report said.
South Africa has the highest number of people living with HIV in the world — 5,3-million, more than half of them women.
Four other countries in the region — Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland — all have “very high HIV prevalence, often exceeding 30% among pregnant women”.
Across sub-Saharan Africa, women are the hardest hit by the disease, with “13 women living with Aids for every 10 infected men”.
The gender gap, which shows no signs of shrinking, widens among younger women, with 36 women aged between 15 and 24 infected with HIV for every 10 men from the same age group.
In east Africa, Uganda saw HIV rates fall from 13% of the adult population in the early 1990s to 4,1% by end-2003 and Kenya “could be on a similar path,” UNAids and the WHO said.
Prevalence rates were also falling in Burundi and Ethiopia.
Infection rates appeared to have stabilised in West and Central Africa, although there were pockets where “serious epidemics are under way”.
“Stabilisation does not necessarily mean the epidemic is slowing,” the report cautioned.
“On the contrary, it can disguise the worst phases of an epidemic — when roughly equally large numbers of people are being newly infected with HIV and are dying of Aids.”
Even in countries which have seen a decline in HIV prevalence, it is “too early to claim that recent declines herald a definitive reversal” in the epidemic, the report warned.
“The need for treatment, care and support will continue to increase for years to come.”
UNAids is a joint venture between 10 UN organisations to help prevent the spread of Aids, care for those already infected and mitigate the impact of the epidemic. – Sapa-AFP
UN sounds grim global warning on Aids