World Aids Day: Thirty-four million people are reported to be living with HIV worldwide

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Submitted by Selbin Kabote on Fri, 02/12/2011 - 3:44pm

As the World celebrated World Aids Day on the 1st of December 2011, the celebrations were instead an occasion of deep concern, since an estimated 34 million people worldwide are reported to be living with HIV.

Sub-Saharan Africa is more heavily affected by HIV and AIDS than any other region of the world.

An estimated 22.5 million people are living with HIV in the region - around two thirds of the global total.

In 2009 around 1.3 million people died from AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa and 1.8 million people became infected with HIV. Since the beginning of the epidemic 16.6 million children have lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS.

A report issued by AVERT, an international HIV and AIDS charity based in the UK say the social and economic consequences of the AIDS epidemic are widely felt, not only in the health sector but also in education, industry, agriculture, transport, human resources and the economy in general.

The AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa continues to devastate communities, rolling back decades of development progress.

Sub-Saharan Africa faces the following challenges, providing health care, antiretroviral treatment, and support to a growing population of people with HIV-related illnesses, reducing the annual toll of new HIV infections by enabling individuals to protect themselves and others and coping with the impact of millions of AIDS deaths on orphans and other survivors, communities, and national development.

However new cases of HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa have dropped from 2.6 million to 1.9 million since 1997.

The global picture in numbers

Figures taken from various sources mostly the UNIAIDS, World Aids Day report, 2011, the World Health Organisation, the National Aids Trust and the Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS say 390-thousand of the new HIV diagnoses in 2010 were of children, 1.8 million AIDS related deaths were reported in 2010, 5.6 million people in South Africa are living with HIV/AIDS and about half or 17 million of those living with HIV/AIDS are women.

A report issued by the Health Protection Agency-HPA says by the end of 2010, an estimated 91,500 people were living with HIV in the UK. To date, 120,000 people have been diagnosed with HIV in the UK, of whom 27,000 have developed AIDS and more than 20,000 have died.

The development of an HIV test in 1984 led to the establishment of the UK laboratory surveillance of HIV antibodies among those tested. This resulted in a first peak of HIV diagnoses in 1985 (2,935) which was accompanied by a rapid rise in AIDS cases and deaths in the late 1980s through to the early 1990s.

HIV and co-infections

HIV stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus. It is a viral infection that attacks the human body’s immune system. Initially a person may show no symptoms of HIV infection as their immune system manages to control it. However, in most cases, the immune system will require help from anti-HIV drugs to keep the HIV infection under control. These drugs do not completely rid the body of HIV infection. Whereas AIDS or Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome is a term that is now rarely used as it is more usual to talk of late-stage or advanced HIV infection.

AIDS is not a single disease or condition, it is a term that is used to describe the point when a person’s immune system can no longer cope, because of damage caused by HIV and specific illnesses start to appear.

HIV is associated with increased susceptibility to a number of opportunistic infections, including tuberculosis, pneumococcal disease, hepatitis B and C, and other sexually transmitted infections. People do not actually die of AIDS, they die as a result of the opportunistic infections that may take hold due their weakened immune system.

This year, 2011, marks the 30th anniversary of the first reports of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). On 5 June 1981, five young homosexual men in the American city of Los Angeles were reported to have Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia and case histories suggesting a ‘cellular-immune dysfunction related to a common exposure’.

These men were the first reported cases of AIDS. Ten days later, the first UK case of AIDS was reported in a young man with haemophilia, followed by further reports of AIDS among homosexual men. These first reports prompted the creation of the UK’s AIDS surveillance scheme in 1982. To date, the AIDS crisis has affected so many millions to the extent that the numbers can be difficult to comprehend.