New HIV infections in decline

The HIV pandemic, which started 28 years ago, is officially in decline, two of the world's leading health organisations said yesterday.

There were about 17% fewer new infections worldwide in 2008, compared with 2001, but fewer than half of those infected began treatment according to estimates in a new report.The number of new HIV infections peaked in the mid-1990s and has since fallen by about a third, according a yearly HIV update 2009, by the Joint United Nations programme on HIV/Aids (UNAids) and the World Health Organisation (WHO).This is the first time that UNAids and the WHO have confirmed that the pandemic is on a downward trend and it is being heralded as a landmark in the history of the disease.

Sex education programmes, HIV awareness campaigns and handing out condoms had had an impact, the organisations said. However some critics said the pandemic was already in decline before wide-scale prevention programmes were rolled out, according to a report in The Independent newspaper. The biggest gains were in sub-Saharan Africa, where there were 400,000 fewer infections, even though the region still accounts for 67% of all new infections. In sub-Saharan Africa – the worst affected region – the report says new infections in 2008 were "approximately 25 per cent lower than at the epidemic's peak in the region in 1995".

Despite the drop in new infections, the number of people living with HIV actually went up last year to 33.4 million because people are surviving longer with antiretroviral drug treatment. Greater access to drugs has helped cut the death toll by 10 per cent over the past five years, it said. Anti-retroviral therapy has also played a key part in preventing new infections in children as more HIV-positive mothers can access treatment that prevents them transmitting the virus to their children. About 200,000 new infections among children have been prevented since 2001, the report said.

In 2008, UNAids and the WHO dismissed suggestions the epidemic had peaked as "speculation" and said it was "difficult to predict the epidemic's future course". That report warned: "The HIV epidemic has repeatedly defied predictions... HIV is likely to have additional surprises in store that the world must be prepared to address."But this year’s update says clearly that the pandemic is past its peak. “In 2008 the estimated number of new HIV infections was approximately 30 per cent lower than at the epidemic's peak 12 years earlier," it said.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children