The highest ever number of new HIV infections and deaths around the world was recorded in 2003, reveals a new UN report.
The update, by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), warns that the global AIDS epidemic shows no sign of abating. Five million new infections of the deadly virus were recorded globally in 2003, and three million deaths, up from 2.7 million in 2002.
“It is quite clear that our current global efforts remain entirely inadequate for an epidemic that is continuing to spiral out of control,” said Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, at the report’s launch in London, UK, on Tuesday.
The disease “remains rampant” in sub-Saharan Africa. The region accounted for over three million of the new infections and 2.3 million deaths in 2003. It is also “threatening a whole new tier of countries” such as China, Indonesia, Russia and Eastern European nations.
A total of 40 million people worldwide are now living with HIV. The figure has been lowered from the 42 million estimated in 2002 after more accurate analysis. Of these, 26.6 million live in sub-Saharan Africa.
“In two short decades HIV/AIDS has tragically become the premier disease of mass destruction,” says Jack Chow, assistant director general for HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria at the World Health Organization (WHO).
Piot stresses that the epidemic is worldwide. “The epidemic has become a global epidemic. This is not an African problem,” he says. He warns that the Caribbean has the second largest percentage of infected individuals in the world. And that “there is a continuing spread of HIV” into other countries.
China, which is a country at the “very, very beginning” of its AIDS epidemic, has roughly 1.5 million infected individuals. “But the number of new infections has progressed by 30 per cent per year over the last three years,” he cautions.
Estimates have suggested that the epidemic may be stabilising in some parts of Africa. But Piot notes this appearance of stabilisation is because the number of new infections are now being balanced by the huge numbers of people dying.
However, Piot is optimistic that it is now “a time of unprecedented opportunity in the 20-years-plus history of this epidemic”.
Tackling AIDS is much more on the political agenda, as well as having more financial backing. But crucially, he says: “There’s a momentum of evidence that prevention can work even in poorer countries.”
Some urban areas in East Africa have managed to cut their rates of new infections with strong prevention programmes. For example, Uganda cut its number of new infections in 2003 for the 12th consecutive year.
The report also focuses on the need for helping people to access treatment to help avoid the devastating and debilitating effects of the illness. Chow announced a global strategy to be led by the WHO to bring antiretroviral treatment to three million people by the end of 2005.
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