ethiozoo

Childhood HIV rates are starting to fall.

August 14, 2010 at 5:17 PM Leave a comment

 
THE NUMBERS: Child mortality in Botswana -
1960175 per thousand
1990:50 per thousand
200081 per thousand
200831 per thousand

WHAT THEY MEAN:
Botswana’s figures illustrate the AIDS pandemic in miniature. World Bank data show the country’s child mortality dropping steadily from 175 children per thousand in 1960 to 50 per thousand; then a drastic increase during the 1990s as the AIDS epidemic hits. Since then international commitments to AIDS education, testing and treatment have begun to show results. Botswana’s improving childhood mortality rates are a particularly hopeful example of this trend: Vrtually all expectant mothers now receive counseling and testing, and when necessary anti-retroviral prophylaxis, and childhood mortality rates now appear to be well below the levels achieved before the epidemic.
Global trends are similar, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and Asia. Improving education, testing, wider access to anti-retroviral drugs for patients — about 450,000 HIV-positive people worldwide were on anti-retroviral therapy in 2001, by 2005 the figure was about 1.3 million, and now it is 5.2 million — and a special focus on care for during pregnancy, have caused transmission to newborns and therefore mortality rates to drop. The UNAIDS global estimates for new infections during childhood, complete through 2008, suggest the following:
Worldwide: The global estimate for new childhood HIV infections dropped from about 520,000 per year in 2003 to 430,000 in 2008, and may now be near 400,000.
Africa: Sub-Saharan Africa remains the center of the AIDS pandemic, with about 22 million of the world’s estimated 33.4 million HIV-positive people and almost 90 percent of new childhood infections. Africa is also where childhood HIV infection rates have dropped most sharply, from a peak of 460,000 per year early in the last decade to about 390,000 in 2008.
Elsewhere: In rich countries, childhood infection is very rare, estimated at below 500 per year in North America, Europe and wealthy Asia. In developing regions the trends appear positive in Asia and the Caribbean: UNAIDS’ estimate suggests that childhood HIV infections are down from 33,000 to 21,000 in Asia and from 2,800 to 2,300 in the Caribbean. The estimates have risen, though, in three other regions: from 6,200 to 6,900 a year in Latin America; 3,000 to 3,700 in Eastern and Central Europe; and from 3,800 to 4,600 in the Middle East.
Not fast, incomplete, uneven — but perhaps the data now suggest grounds for hope.

Source: Trade fact

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