It's a disease which is discussed less and less but it's still here: according to UNAIDS in the world there are 33.2 million people living with HIV, of these 2.5 million are children. Half of the infected are under 25 years and they die before 35. Today, all over the world, we celebrate World Day against AIDS with the aim to raise awareness against this virus and increase prevention education.
Everybody was talking about AIDS, 10-20 years ago, when many people began to be infected and died. Bu today nobody is speaking about it, anymore. Yet people continue to die of AIDS and not only in Africa as many believe. Now we have more profitable diseases like the H1N1 virus to talk about: headlines, full pages devoted to prevention, continuing reports on the number of victims.
The AIDS virus is much more uncomfortable, that's why they do not talk about it. Despite the efforts that have enabled the reduction of new infections by about 17%, each year millions of people are infected and they do not receive the appropriate treatment. Antiretroviral treatments, very costly, are not provided anywhere: at the end of 2008 in developing countries only 42% of people with HIV and AIDS has received the necessary treatment.
Of these many are children: the UNICEF-UNAIDS-WHO-UNFPA report on 'Children and AIDS', released today, says only one HIV-positive children in three (38%) receive the necessary treatment for HIV. The improvements would have been mainly in the fields of prevention of mother to child transmission: because in Botswana 95% of people need this treatment, 91% in Namibia and 73% in South Africa. In total, 45% of HIV-positive women are receiving treatment to prevent transmission of HIV to their children, almost 200% increase since 2005.
But the news is not all negative, because in the last two years, through research and the effects of combination antiretroviral therapy, the number of deaths due to AIDS-related illnesses is declining.
The advice is to maintain a high level of attention to the disease and get tested regularly, especially if you have had sex at risk, because often people find out to be infected when the Aids is full-blown. And then, the therapy with antiretroviral will reduce many of the benefits. In Italy, for example, 60% of diagnoses occurred when the virus was full-blown. The delay of diagnosis, and the consequent spread of the virus, is the biggest problem in Europe. But the majority of HIV-positive, 67%, and the victims, 72%, are located in sub Saharan Africa and in the last year in Central Asia and Eastern Europe there was an increase of 66% of cases .
The world today will try to bring attention to this disease: the Eiffel Tower will turn off for five minutes at 6.30 pm, the Empire State Building and the Brooklyn Bridge in New York will remain in the dark for 5 minutes.
Small drops in the ocean because we should speak about AIDS and prevention every day, in every country.
Marianna Lepore
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