Aids is now the biggest killer among the infectious diseases of the world

“Aids is now the biggest killer among the infectious diseases of the world. It is the number one killer overall in Africa,” he said.”Unlike any other contemporary disease, it is affecting society, the social fabric and the economy, because it kills different people than the other infections, which are more likely to kill the old and very young. There are as many teachers in Swaziland and Zambia todaybeing killed by HIV-Aids than are being trained in teacher-training colleges. HIV is having a major impact on society.”Economists predict that in South Africa, for example, the epidemic will reduce economic growth by between 0.3 and 0.4 per cent a year, resulting in a 17 per cent lower gross domestic product in 2010 than it would have been without HIV-Aids. This is equivalent to wiping $22bn (£15bn) off the country’s economy.An estimated 3.8 million people in sub-Saharan Africa will become infected with HIV in 2000, bringing the total cases in this region to 25.3 million – 70 per cent of the world total.The UN Aids programme warns that, although there are signs that the epidemic in some African countries has “stabilised”, this is largely the result of new infections being matched by the number of people dying of Aids.”In the coming years, unless there is far broader access to life-prolonging therapy, and providing that new infectionsdo not start rising again, the number of surviving HIV-positive Africans can be expected to stabilise and finally shrink as Aids increasingly claims the lives of those infected long ago,” the UN said.In the eight African countries where at least 15 per cent of adults are infected, estimates suggest that Aids will kill one-third of today’s 15-year-olds.There are signs of improvement, notably in Uganda, where health education has had a significant impact.

Ten years ago it was better-educated teenage girls in Uganda who were most likely to engage in casual sex and become infected. Now they are among the least likely, largely due to aggressive health education campaigns.. Russia is suddenly in the grip of the world’s fastest-growing HIV epidemic, but health officials say the authorities remain blind to the gathering danger. Russia is suddenly in the grip of the world’s fastest-growing HIV epidemic, but health officials say the authorities remain blind to the gathering danger.
“The catastrophe is happening now,” says Vadim Pokrovsky, director of the Aids Prevention and Cure Centre in Moscow.”We already have 400,000, maybe 500,000 people infected. But the government is allocating only $1m (£710,000) to combating Aids, compared to $70m for raising the Kursk submarine from the seabed.”In 15 years Aids could be killing 50,000 Russians a year, says Arkadiusz Majszyk, the representative of the UN programme on HIV-Aids in Russia. The epidemic has been fuelled by a rapid rise in drug abuse as Afghanistan came back to haunt the Russians, flooding the country with pure heroin from Afghani laboratories.HIV has only recently become a serious problem in Russia The way the disease is transmitted has also changed The first case of HIV infection was identified in 1987. For the next nine years the disease was transmitted largely by sexual contact and the number of victims grew slowly.That changed four years ago.

Mr Majszyk monitored the growth of the drugs trade in Central Asia for the UN and foresaw that “Russia would become the main market for heroin from Afghanistan, which now produces more than Burma,Thailand and Cambodia combined”.The number of officially reported HIV cases more than doubled to 69,000 last year, but Russian government experts believe the real toll is five or six times higher In city after city similar patterns emerge. HIV develops among drug users, usually through dirty needles or contaminated supplies.In the city of Irkutsk, for instance, a major staging post on the heroin route from Afghan- istan, Mr Majszyk says: “There were no known HIV cases at the beginning of 1999, but now there are 8,000.”There is not a lot the Russian government, desperately short of money for essential services, can do stop HIV spreading among the estimated three million Russians who take drugs Heroin is cheap The country’s long borders are porous Police are corrupt. People who suspect they are infected have only a limited incentive to come forward because they fear being stygmatised. They also know there is little treatment and what there is can cost $1,000 (£710) a month, several times the salary of a Russian general.And the form of the epidemic may change again. At present, 70 per cent of victims are infected because they take drugs But prostitution is common in all main Russian cities. In St Petersburg there are reckoned to be between 5,000 and 10,000 prostitutes who average 14 to 16 clients a week Many prostitutes also use drugs.

A survey in Tverskaya, Moscow’s most fashionable shopping street, shows 15 per cent of prostitutes have HIV. They say few of their clients are willing to wear condoms.Curiously, the one group successful in protecting against Aids is the homosexual community. More aware of the risks, the number of homosexuals infected last year actually fell.Most Russians see Aids as a disease mainly affecting drug takers and prostitutes, both of whom they regard as the criminal fraternity. Because HIV began to spread rapidly only in the last three years fewer than a thousand people have died of Aids so far. Mr Majszyk says this attitude is only likely to change when members of the ruling élite themselves discover they are HIV-positive.. The public needs protection from untested alternative remedies and rogue practitioners of complementary medicine, but no one is providing it, a House of Lords committee said yesterday. The public needs protection from untested alternative remedies and rogue practitioners of complementary medicine, but no one is providing it, a House of Lords committee said yesterday.
The range of therapies on offer, their growing popularity and the absence of controls are putting patients at risk of being misled about the supposed benefits and, at worst, of being harmed, they said in a report.About 5 million people consult complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapists each year and spend £100m on the medicines, yet there is little evidence of which ones work.