World Aids Day

Saturday, 01 December 2007

December 1 is World AIDS Day, which reminds us of the impact of HIV/AIDS on the world’s health. In 2007, approximately 33.2 million people worldwide were living with HIV, and more than 2 million people died from AIDS. In the U.S., an estimated 1 million persons are living with HIV; of these, approximately 25 percent are unaware of their HIV infection and at risk for infecting others.

By 2010, an estimated 16 million children will have lost at least one parent due to AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. Many of them will have to fend for themselves. World leaders have pledged to assist AIDS orphans, their families and communities, but they have yet to live up to such promises.

Around 30 million people in African nations are infected with HIV/AIDS, about 70 percent of all cases in the world. AIDS kills 5,000 adults and 1,000 children every day in Africa. Adult life expectancy there has plunged as much as 20 years because of the disease.

But even without the impact of AIDS, millions of children born in Africa and other poor regions are at greater risk of dying before their fifth birthday than they were a decade ago, said the World Health Report.

International health programs — like WHO-spearheaded attempts to increase access to anti-HIV drugs — face "obstacles that have slowed and in some cases reversed progress toward meeting the health needs of all people," said the 193-page study.

Already struggling health services have been overwhelmed in the fight against AIDS, hampering efforts to defeat older killers like malaria and widening the health divide between rich and poor nations.

"These global health gaps are unacceptable," WHO chief Dr. Lee Jong-wook told reporters as he launched the report. "At the present rate of progress, it will take not 15 years but 150 years to reach the target of reducing child mortality in Africa by two-thirds."

Lee contrasted the prospects of baby girls born in 2002 in Japan and Sierra Leone.

While the Japanese baby can expect to live for about 85 years, life expectancy for the child in one of Africa's poorest countries is now just 36 years. In the United States, women can expect to live to 80 years, and men, 75.

The Japanese girl will likely receive some of the world's best health care whenever she needs it, but the girl in Sierra Leone may never see a doctor, nurse or health worker, said Lee.