Top researchers, policymakers and activists head to Bangkok this week to assess the global AIDS pandemic as the killer disease is poised to ravage Eastern Europe and Asia's most populous countries.
Up to 20,000 people are registered for the conference starting on Sunday, making it the biggest potential turnout for any meeting in the 23-year history of AIDS and the first time this key event will be held in a developing country in Asia.
Ahead of the conference, the UN agency UNAIDS will tomorrow issue its first detailed update on the world epidemic in two years, giving the latest estimated toll of deaths and new infections and country-by-country figures.
PHOTO: AFP
Since it first came to light in 1981, acquired immune deficiency syndrome has left no cranny of the world unscathed.
According to previous estimates, the disease had claimed some 25 million to 26 million lives as of last year, and around 40 million people were living with the disease or the virus that causes it. Around 14,000 more people each day become infected.
There is no cure for HIV, only antiretroviral drugs which keep the virus at bay and which are only just now starting to trickle into poor countries that need them most. And any vaccine to prevent infection seems to lie years away.
Ironically, says UNAIDS Executive Director Peter Piot, the picture is brighter today than it has been in years.
"The landscape of AIDS has changed quite dramatically," he said in a phone interview. "In developing countries, our work has changed, especially in Africa."
The main improvement, he said, is that money is at last starting to flow in big volumes, with funds reaching more than US$5 billion this year alone.
This is still not enough to meet needs, but -- combined with big price cuts for drugs -- it has given a kickstart to the UN's goal of providing three million poor people with antiretroviral therapy by the end of next year.
China, India and Indonesia -- Asia's Big Three, accounting for more than a third of humanity -- are ripe targets for AIDS, as are the former Soviet-bloc countries, experts say.
Each nation is different, but a common thread binds them. The bitter experience of the US, Europe and Africa shows how ignorance, stigma, official indifference and poor resources become a lethal combination, enabling the virus to leap out of small, localized demographic pools and into the population mainstream.
"The handshake of [Chinese] Premier Wen Jiabao (
But, he said, the level of political awareness was not the same in Eastern Europe, facing the fastest-growing HIV spread of any region in the world.
As for India and its neighbors, "the leaders are in a state of denial and there is a very high level of discomfort to even talk about it," Praful Patel, the World Bank's regional vice president, complained last Wednesday. "[They thought] HIV-AIDS is an African problem and it cannot happen in South Asia."
SUPPORT: Elon Musk’s backing for the far-right AfD is also an implicit rebuke of center-right Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz, who is leading polls German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a swipe at Elon Musk over his political judgement, escalating a spat between the German government and the world’s richest person. Scholz, speaking to reporters in Berlin on Friday, was asked about a post Musk made on his X platform earlier the same day asserting that only the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “can save Germany.” “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multi-billionaires,” Scholz said alongside Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain
Pulled from the mud as an infant after the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and reunited with his parents following an emotional court battle, the boy once known as “Baby 81” is now a 20-year-old dreaming of higher education. Jayarasa Abilash’s story symbolized that of the families torn apart by one of the worst natural calamities in modern history, but it also offered hope. More than 35,000 people in Sri Lanka were killed, with others missing. The two-month-old was washed away by the tsunami in eastern Sri Lanka and found some distance from home by rescuers. At the hospital, he was
Two US Navy pilots were shot down yesterday over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, the US military said, marking the most serious incident to threaten troops in over a year of US targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Both pilots were recovered alive after ejecting from their stricken aircraft, with one sustaining minor injuries. However, the shootdown underlines just how dangerous the Red Sea corridor has become over the ongoing attacks on shipping by the Iranian-backed Houthis despite US and European military coalitions patrolling the area. The US military had conducted airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels at the
MILITANTS TARGETED: The US said its forces had killed an IS leader in Deir Ezzor, as it increased its activities in the region following al-Assad’s overthrow Washington is scrapping a long-standing reward for the arrest of Syria’s new leader, a senior US diplomat said on Friday following “positive messages” from a first meeting that included a promise to fight terrorism. Barbara Leaf, Washington’s top diplomat for the Middle East, made the comments after her meeting with Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus — the first formal mission to Syria’s capital by US diplomats since the early days of Syria’s civil war. The lightning offensive that toppled former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on Dec. 8 was led by the Muslim Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in al-Qaeda’s
RSS