Mr Simon Bland, the New York Director of UNAIDS, has expressed a deep concern on the alarming increase in HIV and AIDS among adolescents.
He said on Tuesday in New York that it had become imperative to be worried about adolescents because there had been a tripling in the death rate of adolescents since the beginning of the millennium.
“This is no time for triumphalism, it is not time for complacency.
“Each year still two million people become infected, over a million people die, and in some parts of the world there is little or no progress at all,” he said.
Bland said that HIV and AIDS infection was the second largest cause of death for adolescents globally, adding that there were 26 new adolescent infections every hour.
He said that adolescent girls were disproportionately affected, making it seven out of 10 new infections globally, influenced considerably by high infection rates among girls in Sub-Saharan Africa. “We know in Sub-Saharan Africa the vast-majority of new infections are among young women and girls.
“Half of these girls were in just six countries, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, India, Mozambique and Tanzania,’’ he said.
Bland said that it was important to understand these differences and that there was no part of the world where the job of addressing AIDS was complete.
He said that recent figure from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC), which gave 575,000 as the People Living with HIV and AIDS (PLWHA) by the end of October this year and 177,000 deaths, was of real concern.
“UN AIDS is willing to work with Chinese authorities to see what’s happening in China and offer assistance.’’
He mentioned that Cuba was certified as being free of Mother to Child transmission earlier in 2015.
Meanwhile, Bland said that innovation such as rapid diagnostics had also made it easier to test for HIV and AIDS.
He said that even at that, much more progress was still needed because of the estimated 37 million people living with HIV and AIDS, while around 19 million do not know their status.
He, however, said that while infections and deaths from AIDS had decreased considerably from their peak in 2000 and 2001, respectively, he warned that this progress was fragile, unfinished and reversible. (Xinhua/NAN)
Source: Leadership News
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