HIV/AIDS in Asia

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, UNAIDS, is the main advocate for global action on the epidemic. It leads, strengthens and supports an expanded response aimed at preventing transmission of HIV, providing care and support, reducing the vulnerability of individuals and communities to HIV/AIDS, and alleviating the impact of the epidemic.

The 3rd South African National HIV, Behaviour and Health Survey has kicked off in Pretoria, Cape Town and Durban aiming to reach 28 000 people in 15 000 randomly selected households across the country in the next five months. The survey will be undertaken by a consortium of research institutions led by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) and seeks to find out the levels of HIV infection in South Africa, and to learn what South Africans know, believe and feel about HIV/AIDS.

New data also show HIV prevention programmes getting better results if focused on reaching people most at risk and adapted to changing national epidemics

The focus on safe sex in the gay community in South Africa seems to be dropping off, according to the executive director of health services for the City of Cape Town, Ivan Toms.

South Africa's Department of Correctional Services set the record straight on Friday about it being in the dark over the impact of HIV/AIDS on prison inmates. Dismissing reports that the number of HIV-positive prisoners remained unknown to officials, the department's deputy commissioner for communications, Manelisi Wolela, said the facts had been misconstrued.

The high prevalence HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa is characterised by close-knit sexual networks that allow the propagation of the virus to large numbers of individuals said epidemiologist David Stanton, who believes that Abstinence, Being Faithful and Condoms-based (ABC) interventions, but especially the A & B parts, are the means to disrupt these networks. Stanton, who serves as the Chief of the Division of Technical Research in the Office of HIV/AIDS at USAID, made a scientific case in support of PEPFARs emphasis on A & B, at the 2006 Implementers meeting in Durban last month.

In 2005, a substantial reduction in national HIV prevalence during the previous year was observed in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is being held up as an example of the early success of PEPFAR's ABC approach, but do findings from the field really support that claim? A report on what happened in Zimbabwe was presented at the PEPFAR Implementers meeting last month in Durban, South Africa, by Dr. Owen Murungi from Zimbabwes Ministry of Health and Child Welfare (MoHCW) during a session on ABC.

With sex the main route of transmission of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, injecting drug users have largely been ignored in HIV/AIDS interventions.

Almost one in three people infected with HIV globally live in this subregion. About 43% (860,000 [560,000-1.4 million]) of all children (under 15 years) living with HIV are in southern Africa, as are approximately 52% (6.8 million [5.9 million-7.7 million]) of all women (15 years and older) living with HIV.

UNITED NATIONS, May 30 -- Five years after the United Nations' historic first general assembly on AIDS, the world has seen a huge increase in money and attention going to the 25-year-old epidemic, as well as evidence that the disease has stabilized in many areas and is retreating in more than a few.