AIDS Awareness

Shewara introduced me to the UN's Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic, and it contained some interesting discoveries. Just a few highlights:

1. AFRICA: Bad, But Not As Bad As You Think: The continent of Africa continues to have the world's highest rates of AIDS infections. But across the continent, infection rates vary widely between age/gender groups, populations, and countries. Rates of infection in West Africa tend to be the lowest, and are steadily declining over the past few years. Cote d'Ivoire is at 8% (down 2% since 1997), and Senegal is steady at 2% over the past decade. East Africa has comparatively higher rates but is declining sharply in recent years. Kenya's rates have gone from 15% in 1997 to just 7% in 2005, a fact considered one of AIDS education's great victories. Tanzania went from 16 to 12 over the same span, another good sign. Southern Africa continues to be the worst. Swaziland has gone from 30% to 41% since 1997, and is still rising. Similar numbers are seen for countries across the region. Pregnant women are especially prone due to social pressures, sexual violence, and lack of safe sex education and condoms. AIDS rates among pregnant women in Swaziland can reach 50%. Overall, the continent's rates get much worse the more south you go. Sudan's rates are actually similar to that of the USA, as are the rates in the perennially scary DRC.

2. Other Places Are Getting Worse: Russia and Papua New Guinea have full-blown epidemics on their hands, with infection rates reaching historically high levels for each nation. In particular, Russia has more people with AIDS than any nation on Earth. In southeast and south Asia, AIDS infection is almost perfectly correlated to two factors: prostitution and drug use injection. The majority of people who use injecting drugs also pay for sex, and few prostitutes ever use condoms with the men who pay them. This forms a fertile breeding ground for HIV infection that cannot easily be stopped.

But this is again not true across the board. In India alone, infection rates among injecting drug users in Delhi have quintupled in the past 24 months alone, while in Bengal they have only little more than doubled. In Karachi, Pakistan, possibly the worst such situation on Earth, rates of HIV infection among injecting drug users went from 1% to 23% in less than a year. But why? A combination of factors: economic depression leads to higher rates of drug use, fewer needles to be used, and a complete lack of access to proper medical care. Tough problems to solve.

3. HIV Is Spread For A Number Of Reasons In the United States, Latin America, and Europe, HIV infection and transmission rates continue to be the highest among men who have sex with men. In Asia, these rates are highest among injecting drug users and people who engage in prostitution, while in sub-Saharan Africa the highest rates across the board are found in pregnant women, generally in their 30s. What this says is that the spread of HIV has as much to do with geographically-specific cultural factors as it does with scientific facts. Southern Africans are exceddingly poor and overall still adapting to harsh urban life - as a result they need to produce more children to have a greater chance at the few land and economic resources in the region, and as a result AIDS spreads quicker. This fact becomes less true as you go north, reflected in the lower infection rates. In the US and Europe, where such problems are not nearly as large of a concern, HIV infection becomes pushed to marginalized sexualities who are culturally denied acceptance of their sexuality, thus lifestyle, and thus safer sex practices.

Read the whole fascinating and visually engaging report here.

And please use a condom, every single time. No exceptions.