- Title: SWITZERLAND: AIDS rates growing among drug users, gays report
- Date: 26th June 2008
- Summary: (BN02) GENEVA, SWITZERLAND (JUNE 25, 2008 ) (REUTERS) CONFERENCE ROOM (SOUNDBITE) (English) DR MUKESH KAPILA, SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE OF THE IFRC'S SECRETARY GENERAL FOR HIV AND AIDS, SAYING: "In our scale-up over the next few years, our approach is very much to reach the unreachable, to reach out to groups that are currently not being touched by programmes, but who hold t
- Embargoed: 11th July 2008 13:00
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- Location: Switzerland
- Country: Switzerland
- Topics: Health
- Reuters ID: LVA7NIHA8UKIW7JC7572847HRGCL
- Story Text: HIV/AIDS infection rates are growing among intravenous drug users, prostitutes and gay men around the globe but they are often viewed as outcasts and refused treatment, according to the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent's 2008 annual report on Disasters.
"The bad news is that as the epidemic plateaus, it is getting more and more concentrated in certain populations, and those are the poorest, most stigmatised, the drug users, the sex workers, their partners, and so on. So we see we still have a seriously important epidemic but it is now distributed in parts of the world and it's not equally distributed all over the world,"
the IFRC's Secretary General Special Representative for HIV and AIDS told a news conference today (June 25).
Those groups, living on the fringes of society in many countries and especially in the developing world, "often face stigma, criminalisation and little, if any, access to prevention and treatment services, according to the report.
The 248-page study, an annual World Disasters Report, gave no new figures for AIDS sufferers but cited United Nations statistics that 2.1 million died from the disease last year.
The Federation also said the HIV virus was at the root of a rolling social crisis across southern Africa.
Its officials told a news conference the recent upheaval in Zimbabwe -- where until recently the battle against AIDS had benefited from a widespread treatment network -- could disrupt medical care and make that situation worse.
"We have agreed now to double our targets in Zimbabwe and we feel that unless we do this, the effect of the general crisis of food in the country, especially the food prices and the rising food prices that most of the people cannot get that, the most targeted people or the most affected people will the people living with HIV - AIDS and orphan children, so we decided to double our numbers and we go from 140 thousand to 260 thousand," the body's deputy secretary general Ibrahim Osman said.
The Federation said it centred its 2008 World Disasters Report on the immune-destroying disease rather than floods or earthquakes because for many communities the epidemic "is undoubtedly a disaster."
"In our scale-up over the next few years, our approach is very much to reach the unreachable, to reach out to groups that are currently not being touched by programmes, but who hold the key to bringing the whole pandemic under control. If we don't do that, we will continue to spend billions at the problem, but we will continue to have this as a major public health and social challenge," Kapila said.
There were 405 natural disasters world-wide last year, compared to 423 in 2006, the Federation said. Those killed just under 17,000 people, the lowest annual figure for a decade, but the numbers affected rose by 40 percent to 201 million. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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