U.N.: Fight Against AIDS Can't Keep Up

(CBS/AP)  Despite a stepped up global battle against AIDS, the numbers of people newly infected with HIV are far and away outpacing the numbers beginning antiretroviral drug treatments, U.N. officials said Monday.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, opening several days of U.N. debate on AIDS prevention, told world leaders that 2.5 million people became infected with HIV last year compared with 1 million who started using important antiretroviral drugs.

"Unless greater and swifter advances are made in reaching those who need essential services, the epidemic's burden on households, communities and societies will continue to mount," Ban said.

Some 2.1 million people died of AIDS last year and at least 33 million people world wide have the virus, according to U.N. figures.

"The U.N.'s conclusion is that the AIDS epidemic is overwhelming the progress made in treating it," said CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk.

"As the number of AIDS-infected individuals rises, UNAIDS, the World Health Organization and UNICEF are fighting an uphill battle," added Falk, who is based at the U.N.

In addition, people with weakened immune systems from HIV are up to 50 times more likely to develop tuberculosis, U.N. officials say.

"We cannot separate the fight against HIV/AIDS from the fight against TB," said General Assembly President Srgjan Kerim, who will preside over a two-day meeting on AIDS starting Tuesday.

Falk noted that the conference comes on the heels of a report that one in four teen-age girls in the U.S. has a sexually transmitted disease, "adding to concerns about apathy with regard to HIV/AIDS prevention."

Former President Bill Clinton, in his first public speech since his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, withdrew from the U.S. presidential race last week, pointed out ramifications that rising oil prices have on battling the disease.

"This oil price spike has taken away 100 percent of the value of foreign aid and debt relief to very many countries," he told the U.N. "It has dramatically increased the cost of producing food, and it has increased therefore the number of people who are at risk of these diseases."

Dr. Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, said 2 million people were getting antiretroviral drugs in Africa.

Antiretroviral drugs have made HIV a manageable illness for many patients and prolonged their lives beyond what once seemed possible.

The U.N.-backed Global Fund to Fight AIDS Tuberculosis and Malaria announced Monday it has helped a total of 1.75 million people get antiretroviral treatment, an increase of 59 percent over last year.

But slightly more than two-thirds of people with HIV globally are not getting any such treatment, according to U.N. figures.

[rf35]

you must be a liberal

Posted by libsluv2spit at 11:31 PM : Jun 10, 2008

No, I%u2019m a moderate. I love guns and don''t think homosexuals should be allowed to get married, but I also think large corporations have too much power and the war in Iraq (but not Afghanistan) is wrong.

[apndrgn]

Vested interests are at the core. Dupont successfully halted global cooling when the U.S. court required 134a to be used as a refrigerant in automobiles. Dupont was loosing monopoly on the R12 refrigerant. In reality, Hydrocarbon refrigerants like duracool are over 25% more efficient while requiring half the load on the ac compressor. Imagine all the cars in america enforced by their own courts to tote around an ac compressor that is sucking the life out of their milage to perpetuate an old boys network of justices who are enthroned by dupont. Is that cool or what?
Are we going to race across the sahara in our 134a cooled ambulance with aids vaccines?

[gaye5]

Sorry misprint...
And they want us to teach homosexuality to our children, hmmm... talk to the hundreds of homosexuals who are now coming out of homosexuality.. and no there is not a gay gene, even homosexuals admit to that themselves..

[gaye5]

The Boston Globe published an article on February 7, 1999. It is an important article because it contributes to the growing body of evidence that homosexuality is not simply "genetic."
Serious scientists have long known that a simply "genetic" cause for homosexuality was highly unlikely, but the mass media conveyed the misimpression of genetic causation to the general public. In the Globe article, prominent researchers admit the distinct limitations of the "born that way" theory.

"Gay gene" researcher Dean Hamer --himself a gay man--comments, "It is the same for every human behavior--environment matters for extroversion, smoking cigarettes, just about anything you can name."

Richard Pillard, a professor of psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine who was involved in a study of twins and sexual orientation, has done research showing that sexuality is greatly influenced by environment, and that the role of genetics is, in the end, limited."

[gaye5]

This is a self inflicted disease and we spend trillions on a cure, surely the cure IS to teach abstinence. Evidently the virus can go through the tiny pores of the condom, so if this is true then the only answer is abstinence..

We have gone from 5 gay men with aids in 1985 to 36 Million within ten years, and 20 years later to 40.3, doesn''t that say where our morals are at.. Bisexuals passed the disease to the heterosexuals along with blood transfusions, and now from the homosexuals we now have 8 more new diseases''

At least 8 new sexually transmitted germs were identified between 1980 and 1997. Dr. Max Essex, chair of the Harvard AIDS Institute, warned Congress in 1992 that "AIDS has already led to other kinds of dangerous epidemics. . .

Of course this is going to happen with the type of practices that they do...
The typical sexual practices of homosexuals are a medical horror story - imagine exchanging saliva, feces, *** and/or blood with dozens of different men each year. Imagine drinking urine, ingesting feces and experiencing rectal trauma on a regular basis. The faces are ingested from a practice called rimming, which is using the tongue around the ????..
And they want us to teach homosexuality to our children, hmmm... talk to the hundreds of homosexuals who are not coming out of homosexuality.. and no there is not a gay gene, even homosexuals admit to that themselves..

[jboxton]

Why sink all this money into savages from 3rd world countries when we should worry about stopping the epidemic in the US. And shut up OIGN you little boy conspiracy theorist. Of course it exists.

[killtheliars]

though it does not come out and say it why do I have the feeling everyone is looking at the U.S. for more money?

[superdem]

And meanwhile, the Bush Administration forbids *** education or condom distribution, teaching abstinence only. SOOOOOO STUPID.

[rf35]

I say we pull all foreign aid funding until our own economy is stabilized. Tell the UN to go bother Britain or France for money and leave us alone. As for AIDS, halt all export of the drugs from their country of origin (or the home country of the corporation) until AIDS is wiped out there. Allow the herd to thin in these third world countries. They%u2019r breeding too fast as it is. If you%u2019re religious, just think of it as %u201CGod%u2019s Will.%u201D

[oigen]

What a waste of resources for the phantom HIV which has never been proven to cause anything let alone what is called AIDS which in Africa is just a renaming of real diseases like malaria and tuberculosis. The AIDS experts led by the incomparable Kevin de ***, the head of the WHO''s department of HIV/Aids are now saying that worldwide pandemic AIDS never really existed with the result that precious funds to fight real disease have been everywhere misdirected. See.......http://***********/2jrcsj