November 30, 2007

WAD 2007: Leaders Warn Against Complacency

As World AIDS Day approaches, health experts and AIDS advocates are warning people around the world against becoming complacent in the fight against AIDS and reiterating that though infections are dropping in some communities and people are accessing lifesaving drugs, 6,000 people still die of AIDS each day (uk.news.yahoo.com, 11/30).

Earlier this year, UNAIDS announced that the percentage of people in the world living with HIV peaked in the late 1990s. The organization has also reduced its estimate on the number of people worldwide currently living with HIV, and the number of new infections is said to have dropped in 2007 from last year.

However, AIDS experts are saying that this is no time to relax in efforts to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS or work to provide services for people living with or affected by the disease.

"Despite substantial progress against AIDS worldwide, we are still losing ground," says James Shelton of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). For example, though antiretroviral drug access is improving, treatment is available to only about 10 percent of people who need them, he said.

“We must not be complacent about the AIDS crisis,” said Paul Zeitz, executive director of the Global AIDS Alliance. “There is still a huge unmet need for basic HIV/AIDS services, including for orphaned children.”

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