Climbing HIV figures show a changing picture

Over 500 people from Mauritius, Madagascar, Reunion Island, the Comoros and Seychelles attended the seventh conference on AIDS in Indian Ocean, and shared their growing concern over the impact of AIDS in their respective countries.

The Indian Ocean region has been much less affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic than countries in neighbouring Africa, but this could be changing, delegates at the conference in Mauritius from 10 to 12 November heard.

The main problem shared by all five the island nations was stigma towards people living with the virus; otherwise, although the islands are not far from each other, their problems are different.

In Comoros - a three-island archipelago with a population of 700,000 - UNAIDS estimated that in 2007 fewer than 200 people were living with HIV. Although Comoros has low HIV prevalence, it faces considerable poverty, low condom use, poor levels of HIV knowledge and a high incidence of sexually transmitted infections.

Madagascar, the biggest island in the Indian Ocean and also one of the poorest countries in the region, still has a low prevalence of 0.1 percent, with 14,000 people living with HIV at the end of 2007, according to UNAIDS.

However, limited access to health and social services, multiple and concurrent partnerships, and high rates of sexually transmitted infections mean the Malagasy are becoming increasingly vulnerable to HIV.

Mauritian Prime Minister Dr Navinchandra Ramgoolam told delegates that the island now has a prevalence rate of 1.8 percent, and called for greater vigilance in curbing the spread of the epidemic.

Although the country has been providing free antiretroviral (ARV) drugs since 2002, it has experienced an explosive growth in new HIV infections, with a shift in the main mode of HIV transmission from heterosexual sex to injecting drug use. In 2000 only 2 percent of people living with HIV were injecting drug users; in 2006 this had shot up to 85.9 percent.

The government has introduced a needle exchange programme to provide injecting drugs users with clean equipment to prevent the spread of infections, but the move was heavily criticised.

Dr Willy Rozenbaum, head of the French National AIDS Council and a member of the team that first discovered the virus, hailed the Mauritian Government for having taken this decision.

"We can eradicate this disease in 50 years with the facilities and knowledge that we have at present. We do not need to invent new things if we strictly apply what we have now. There must be strong political commitment to this, and to stopping stigmatisation, which is often more painful than the disease itself."

In the Seychelles archipelago, a lack of facilities and social care were the main issues.

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