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Europe and Central Asia join forces against HIV/AIDS

Fifty-five European and Central Asian nations -- some home to the world's fastest HIV/AIDS growth rates -- are joining forces to raise awareness and money to fight a disease that has gone global in 20 years and now affects 40 million people.

Ahead of the two-day conference that Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern was to open on Monday, officials released data showing Europe and Central Asia gripped by diverse HIV/AIDS epidemics reflecting large differences in development in an area stretching from Ireland to the Caucasus.

AIDS, discovered only two decades ago, is set to become the leading cause of death from infectious disease in the 21st century.

Sub-Saharan Africa is worst hit, but UN data show that Eastern Europe and Central Asia now boast the world's fastest-growing epidemic: 2 million people there have HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, up from 30,000 in 1995.

The Dublin event is the first international forum to discuss the impact of the disease on Europe and its eastern neighbors. It brings together health ministers from 55 nations, as well as Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, the Irish musician and rights activist Bob Geldof, and Peter Piot, head of UNAIDS.

Overall AIDS fatalities have fallen sharply in Western Europe since the mid-1990s due to antiretroviral drugs that slow the progression of HIV infection into full-blown AIDS. But in 2002 and last year, infection among heterosexuals rose again due to immigration, "treatment complacency" and waning prevention efforts, said the conference report.

Eastern Europe and Central Asia offer a bleak outlook. Worst off are Russia, Ukraine and soon-to-be EU members Estonia and Latvia. HIV continues to spread in Belarus, Moldova and Kazakhstan, and "epidemics are now evident in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan," said the report.

Ireland, the current EU presidency holder, is pushing AIDS higher up on Europe's political agenda to show "the disease is now a very serious problem ... particularly in Eastern European countries and Central Asia," according to Irish Development Minister Tom Kitts.

The World Bank reported last fall that current efforts to "curb HIV/AIDS in the region are too small to have an effect," adding that prevention and care programs require a fivefold rise in funding -- from US$300 million in 2001 to US$1.5 billion by 2007. UN data show the number of people in Eastern Europe and Central Asia living with HIV has risen exponentially in just a few years, to as many as 2 million by the end of last year.

Last year up to 280,000 people were newly infected -- through unsafe sex or injecting drugs with contaminated needles -- and "hundreds of thousands face the imminent risk of HIV infection unless prevention efforts are expanded and improved."

In Western Europe, AIDS death rates have plummeted from more than 20,000 in 1996 to 3,500 last year.

The UN Development Program said last week that 1 in every 100 adults in Russia, Ukraine and Estonia carries HIV. It reported more than 257,000 HIV cases in Russia last year, more than 7,500 of them among children.
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