29 Nov Health officials warn Europe and Central Asia on spread of HIV
Europe will miss its 2015 targets for curbing the spread of HIV, says the World Health Organisation (WHO), with an 80 per cent increase in HIV transmission in 2013 compared with a decade earlier.
Ahead of this year’s World AIDS Day (1 Dec), the latest figures from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and WHO reveal that approximately 136,000 people became infected with HIV in Europe and Central Asia last year.
Of those 136,000 infections, 105,000 were in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, where the spread of HIV has reached epidemic proportions among drug users. Eastern Europe accounted for 77 per cent of all new HIV infections in 2013 – partly driven by drug use and a lack of access to appropriate medication. It’s now known that medication can greatly reduce HIV viral loads in people who are HIV + and reduce the chance of transmitting the virus to others.
In Western Europe, the main mode of HIV transmission remains sex between men, accounting for 42 per cent of new cases in 2013. This follows figures released by Public Health England in mid-November that revealed one in 17 gay men in England were now living with HIV, rising to one in eight in London.
Commenting on the Europe and Central Asia figures released yesterday, Zsuzsanna Jakab, the WHO’s regional director, said, ‘Europe has not managed to reach the 2015 Millennium Development Goal target to halt and reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, and time is running out. While we are increasingly facing emerging health threats, this reminds us that we cannot afford to drop our guard on HIV/AIDS.’
Source: Gay Star News