UN Marks World AIDS Day on December 1: “Live and Let Live”

For the past 15 years, December 1 has been commemorated as World AIDS Day – the opportunity to show solidarity with people living with HIV/AIDS, to highlight the need to prevent infection, and to remember those who have died of AIDS.

This year, millions of people around the globe marked World AIDS Day with marches, funerals and prayers against the backdrop of grim statistics that show the raging epidemic outpacing all efforts to control it. This year’s slogan was “Live and Let Live”, highlighting the importance of preventing stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV and AIDS.

Every year the number of people infected or affected by HIV/AIDS increases. UNAIDS estimates that globally more than 42 million people are now living with HIV, and five million people have been newly infected with HIV this year. And 3.1 million have died of AIDS this year.

In China, officials instructed one million students to launch a new national AIDS awareness campaign; in Britain, health experts warned of a startling spike in new infections, and in South Africa - the country worst hit by the disease - they held a mass funeral for babies. “We pay tribute to all the children who have passed away in our care,” said Jackie Schoeman of the Cotlands Baby Sanctuary, which held a ceremony Sunday in Johannesburg to inter the cremated ashes of some of the littlest sufferers.

Major expansion of HIV Epidemics in Asia

Worldwide, the virus is now spreading into regions which could transform the epidemic into a truly global disaster and has a frightening ability to evolve and adapt, developing resistance to drugs and complicating the quest for a vaccine.

Best current projections suggest that an additional 45 million people will become infected with HIV between 2002 and 2010 unless the world succeeds in mounting a drastically expanded, global prevention effort. More than 405 of those infections would occur in Asia and the Pacific, which currently accounts for about 20% of new annual infections.

Stigma and Discrimination Still Major Barriers

Despite moderate but noteworthy progress in rolling back the spread of HIV in several African countries, stigma and discrimination remain major barriers to reversing the AIDS epidemic.

“There are encouraging signs that prevention efforts are bearing fruit among young people in Ethiopia and South Africa,” said Dr. Peter Piot, Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). “HIV prevalence has dropped among young inner-city women in Addis Ababa and young pregnant women in South Africa. These are new, hopeful signs of progress against the epidemic.” However, Dr Piot warned, such positive trends should not overshadow the severity of the epidemic.

“Discrimination and stigma continue to stand as barriers,” Dr Piot said. “Stigma harms. It silences individuals and communities, saps their strength, increases their vulnerability, isolates people and deprives them of care, of support. We must break down these barriers or the epidemic will have no chance of being pushed back.”

HIV/AIDS in Bangladesh: Preventing a Major Epidemic

Bangladesh continues to be a low prevalence country for HIV, with very low infection rates among vulnerable populations such as female sex workers and injecting drug users But Bangladesh has a high risk for HIV – highlighting the importance of increasing HIV prevention efforts, and thereby preventing a major epidemic

Risk behaviour includes:

  • low condom use among sex workers and their clients, condoms are used in less than 20% of all commercial sex acts

  • needle sharing among injecting drug users

  • and a high rate of other sexually transmitted diseases among sex workers, e.g., up to 40% syphilis-positive rates among street and brothel based female sex workers

HIV prevention projects are carried out by NGOs in many places in Bangladesh, and the government is expanding its work, too. But there is an urgent need to expand effective programmes: behaviour change communication, condom promotion, STD services and harm reduction efforts, to promote changes in risk behaviour.