More condoms, fewer AIDS victims

David Nason, New York correspondent

June 01, 2006 A REPORT showing the battle against AIDS is being won has taken centre stage at a UN conference in New York, where fiery debate is expected between the sexual abstinence lobby of US first lady Laura Bush and pro-condom campaigners such as Australian actor Naomi Watts.

Mrs Bush will address the conference tomorrow, arguing the conservative White House line that education programs promoting abstinence should be the cornerstone of international AIDS prevention strategies.

Watts, who is attending the conference in her new capacity as a UNAIDS ambassador, publicly disagreed with the US abstinence policy last month, saying she was a "big believer in contraception protection".

Mrs Bush is leading a 47-member US delegation to the conference that includes her daughter Barbara, abstinence pusher Anita Smith from the US presidential advisory council on HIV-AIDS, and Baptist minister Herb Lusk, an adviser to President George W. Bush on faith-based programs.

But the first lady will have a difficult time winning converts after the greater use of condoms was identified in the 2006 report from UNAIDS - the UN's program on AIDS and HIV - as a major reason for inroads against the disease in some of the world's worst-affected areas.

The report cites a worldwide decrease in the number of new infections, particularly among young people, and says more victims are receiving treatment than ever before. There were about 38.6 million people living with AIDS last year, slightly fewer than the previous year.

But despite the progress, the epidemic continues to exact a tragic human toll.

The report says 11,000 people become infected with AIDS each day, while 8000 people die each day from the disease.

It says the epidemic is "not dissipating" in Australia, where an estimated 16,000 people have AIDS. Australia's HIV infection rate is rising as more gay men revert to unprotected sex, it says, warning that prevention, diagnosis and treatment efforts need revamping to ensure at-risk sections of the community, such as Aborigines, are reached.

UNAIDS executive director Peter Piot said some of the best news in the report came from Africa and Asia, where declining trends were evident in several countries, a result of increased condom use and delayed first sexual intercourse. "Before, in eastern Africa we could only point to Uganda," Dr Piot said. "Now there's Kenya, urban Zambia and some parts of west Africa. Also southern India, Cambodia and Thailand.

"This is a very important development and makes me think that 2005 was probably the least bad year of AIDS in the 25 years of the disease."

India has the largest number of people living with HIV-AIDS. With an estimated 5.7million infections, it has surpassed South Africa's 5.5million.

But Dr Piot said the epidemic remained at its worst in sub-Saharan Africa, where per capita rates in several countries continue to climb. Last year, a third of adults were infected in Swaziland last year.

Other AIDS black spots were South Africa, Namibia and Botswana, along with Eastern Europe and the Asia Pacific nations of China, Indonesia, Vietnam and Papua New Guinea.

Dr Piot also said the proportion of women infected continued to rise. "It is still a very dramatic epidemic. We are making progress but unfortunately we are not yet on the way to reversing the epidemic.

"I think we will see a further globalisation of the epidemic spreading to every single corner of the planet."

He said one of the most disturbing findings was how few babies were being protected against infection. Only 9 per cent of pregnant women in poor countries were receiving services, such as access to drugs, to help prevent mother-to-child transmission, despite a UNAIDS goal of 80 per cent coverage.

"The thing I'm most disappointed with and surprised about is prevention of mother-to-child transmission," Dr Piot said.

"Here we have something that is non-controversial; it's about saving the babies."

The conference, which marks the 25th anniversary of the discovery of the deadly disease, has attracted a dozen heads of state and about 100 health ministers. Activists from about 800 accredited non-government organisations are also attending.

The conference will debate ways to further advance AIDS prevention and look for ways to achieve the goal of universal access to treatment by 2010.

UNAIDS says less than one in five people at risk of HIV infection has access to basic prevention tools such as condoms.

AIDS has killed more than 25 million people since it was first identified in 1981.

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