Road injuries could overtake HIV and tuberculosis as a cause of premature death and disability around the world by 2020, it is claimed. According to the World Health Organisation, road traffic deaths could increase by 80 per cent in some countries.
Better systems to control the spread of diseases like tuberculosis and HIV/Aids
are needed as the European Union (EU) extends its borders to the east, European
health experts have warned.
“
We are talking about perhaps a million people with HIV, the collision of two
epidemics which threaten to have an enormous impact on what should be economically
productive people,” said Dr Richard Coker, of the European Centre on
Health.
US HIV activists are predicting the G8 meeting of world’s economic powers,
will fail to prioritise HIV and Aids when it meets in Georgia on 8 June.
“Aids should be the number one priority of the industrialised world,” said
Professor Jose de Cruz, of Atlanta State University, “It should be top
of the G8 agenda, but it won’t.”
Professor Godfrey Gibbison, of Georgia Southern University, said: “When
G8 nations get together, they make a lot of promises about HIV and Aids, but
when they go back home, these promises disappear.”
A Libyan court has sentenced six Bulgarian medics and a Palestinian doctor
to death by firing squad for causing the death of 40 children and deliberately
infecting 400 others with HIV.
The Bulgarian government has called the verdicts “unfair and absurd” and
the EU has expressed deep concern. The nurses and two doctors have protested
their innocence and accused the Libyan police of using torture. Expert witnesses
at the trial said the HIV outbreak among the children was caused by poor hospital
hygiene.
“In 2003, five million people became infected. That’s a failure
of prevention. Last year three million people died of Aids, more than ever
before. That’s a failure of providing treatment.”
Dr Peter Piot, head of UNAIDS.
“
For some segments of America’s most disenfranchised and vulnerable populations,
rates of HIV rival those of sub-Saharan Africa. Given these statistics, we
fear America is losing the war against HIV/Aids.”
US presidential nominee,
John Kerry.
“
The over 50s are at increased risk of cognitive impairment, even with HAART...
minor cognitive impairment is not uncommon in people with HIV and it essentially
means being a bit slow, a slightly advanced aging...You behave as if you’re
ten years older than you are.”
Dr Jose Catalan, consultant psychologist at the Chelsea
and Westminter Hospital, in an interview with NAM’s Aids Treatment
Update.
“
Instead of learning the basic lessons of how to fight Aids from countries that
have older epidemics, the Russian government is endangering the broader population
by putting up barriers to HIV prevention.”
Joanne Csete, of Human Rights Watch.
“The fantastic change in my life was that I used to say to people who
were newly diagnosed with HIV that I’d help them die, but now I can tell
them that if they take their pills they’ll live to a ripe old age.”
Professsor Brain Gazzard, former chair of the
British HIV Association.
“We owe a duty not just to look after HIV patients
here but also those across the world.”
Professor Gazzard,
delivering his valedictory address in Cardiff.
