Latest predictions from the United Nations suggest that the impact of Aids will mean 300 million fewer people in the world by 2050. The new estimates reflect more Aids deaths and fewer births due to the early deaths of women. The UN is predicting the biggest rises in Aids deaths in China (40 million) and India (47 million) and says that the population in sub-Saharan Africa will be 19 per cent lower by mid century.
Aids in the military has emerged as a new security threat to developing countries, such as South Africa, Angola and the Congo, where more than four in 10 soldiers have HIV. A study by the US Centre for Strategic Research has linked prolonged fighting and plundering in Congo to high infection rates in the Rwandan army. The Centre's Radhika Sarin said that governments were slow to end involvement in conflict because of fears of what would happen to infected soldiers coming home from wars.
One piece of good news this month is that, thanks to medication, many girls born with HIV are now living to be mothers themselves. A study of eight women born with HIV in Puerto Rico showed they had 10 pregnancies between 1998 and 2002 and none of the seven babies born developed the virus. "They were born with HIV, and now they are not only alive, but healthy enough to have their own children," Dr Michelle McConnell said; “I think this is going to happen more and more.”
An International Narcotics Control Board report last month said that the Aids threat is rising among the estimated half a million addicts in Pakistan amid increased heroin use. Pakistan is a major transit point for international drug trafficking, the report says, most of which originates from nearby Afghanistan. Since the fall of the Taliban, who successfully halted poppy cultivation, the country has again become a major heroin exporter.
Asia could be hit by the same catastrophic Aids epidemic as Africa and the world's businesses must help fight the disease, a Bangkok conference heard last month. "Every day, three times as many people die from Aids as died on September 11 in New York City and at the Pentagon," said Richard Holbrooke, chairman of the Global Business Coalition on HIV and Aids. "Businesses have not scratched the surface of what they can do."
A Malawi tribal chief said last month that Aids doesn't exist and thousands of deaths attributable to the epidemic were killed by a plague sent by God to punish misbehaving youth. Chief Makunganya added that the disease was a ploy by activists to confuse people and stories about Aids discouraged people from working hard. Meanwhile at least 14 per cent of Malawi's 11 million people are living and dying from HIV and the Land Minister Thengo Maloya has admitted that he has personally lost three children to Aids.
HIV and Aids prevention programmes have had a dramatic effect on changing risky sexual behaviour in Ethiopia, according to UN research. A five-year study among 1,500 factory workers showed a marked drop in casual sex, increased condom use and a big drop in new infections after an intensive counselling and HIV awareness campaign. "The knowledge of HIV in this country is very high," said Dr Yared Mekonnen, "but behavioural change is very difficult and the only way to change it is with voluntary testing and counselling."
A couple who just adopted five-month-old twin babies with HIV is fighting an eviction notice from their West Hollywood apartment. The landlord said the two babies "are keeping everyone in the building up" and complained of "non-stop screaming." Local campaigners have joined forces with the couple and the local mayor to fight for the right to keep their home.
