Sub-Saharan Africa still the global epicentre of the AIDS epidemic

Sub-Saharan Africa is still at the global epicentre of the AIDS epidemic, UN agencies warn in the latest report on the spread of the disease. According to the AIDS Epidemic Update from the UNAIDS programme and the World Health Organisation (WHO), released ahead of World AIDS Day on 1 December, new evidence shows clearly for the first time that the number of women infected with HIV/AIDS outnumber men. “Ten years ago, it was hard to make people listen when we were saying AIDS wasn’t just a man’s disease. Today, we see the evidence of the terrible burden women now carry in Africa’s epidemic,” said Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS. The report said that 55 percent of infected adults in sub-Saharan Africa were women, “which means more than six HIV-positive women for every five HIV-positive men.” UNAIDS and WHO estimate that by the end of this year there will be an estimated 12.2 million African women and 10.1 million African men aged between 15 and 49 that are living with HIV. Statistics from the report show that in 1999 there were 23.3 million men, women and children in sub-Saharan Africa living with HIV/AIDS. This figure represents, according to the report, almost 70 percent of the world’s total infections in a region that is home to just 10 percent of the world’s population. The report said that studies done in several countries in the region have shown that African girls aged between 15 and 19 are five to six times more likely to be HIV-positive than boys the same age. “Ease of male-to-female sexual transmission, and sex with older, infected men appear to be the contributing factors to girls greater vulnerability to HIV,” it said. “Clearly, older men - who often coerce girls into sex or buy their favours with sugar-daddy gifts - are the main source of HIV for the teenage girls.” UNAIDS and WHO also estimate that nearly 90 percent of the 500,000 children born with the virus or infected through breastfeeding in 1999 lived in sub-Saharan Africa. Life expectancy at birth in southern Africa, which rose by 15 years from 44 to 59 in the early 1950’s, could drop back down to 45 between 2005 and 2010 because of AIDS. By comparison, people in South Asia can expect to live 22 years longer by 2005 than they did in the 1950’s. In South Africa fewer than 50 percent of South Africans currently alive can expect to reach the age of 60.