| ■ Battlelines shift, but war against AIDS far from won | 2007.12.03 |
| PARIS (AFP) - This year's World AIDS Day sees health watchdogs battling against complacency, warning that AIDS still kills some 6,000 people each day even if the estimated toll of infections has fallen and life-saving drugs are being rolled out. The December 1 event is traditionally a time of grim stocktaking. AIDS campaigners sound the alarm over the disease's rampage through Africa, the threat it poses to Asia and former Soviet republics and the risks to vulnerable communities such as sex workers, drug users and gay men. Superficially, 2007 is a rare moment for celebration -- and this is what worries the experts. On November 20, the agency UNAIDS announced that the prevalence of HIV or AIDS -- the percentage of the world's population living with the HIV virus or the disease it causes -- peaked sometime in the late 1990s. UNAIDS also reduced its estimate of the number of people living with HIV or AIDS, from 39.5 million in 2007 after 33.2 million in 2006, after overhauling its methods for collecting data. The tally of new infections has fallen, too, from 3.0 million in the late 1990s to an estimated 2.5 million in 2007. |