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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Beth Benne, RN, is HIV negative, but
the virus has impacted her life. She currently supervises a biannual HIV/AIDS awareness week as
the director of the student health center at Pierce College, a
community commuter school in Woodland Hills, California.
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Overheard in the Women's Forum
"I recently met a guy who is negative. I did tell him about my status and he decided to kiss me anyway (we didn't go further than that). But a day later, he called and said that he actually had a mouth ulcer that time when we kissed and he was very worried. Asked if he can get the virus from me that way. For that moment, I felt so insulted and yet I felt so bad. It was my first time having a contact with a "negative" guy."
