by
Astrid Fiano, DOTmed News Writer | June 04, 2008
WHO's 2008 HIV/AIDS
treatment report outlines
the difficulties for some
patients to receive ART therapy.
The World Health Organization (WHO) a non-governmental agency that tracks health conditions and treatment around the globe, has released its 2008 report on HIV/AIDS treatment worldwide. The 148-page report is available on WHO's website. The report, "Towards universal access: scaling up priority HIV/AIDS interventions in the health sector," is a joint effort with UNICEF and UNAIDS.
On the positive side, nearly 3 million people are now receiving anti-retroviral therapy (ART) in low- and middle-income countries. The higher numbers are due to availability and price reduction of drugs, improved delivery systems that are better adapted to individual countries, and increased demand for anti-retroviral therapies (ART) as the number of HIV diagnoses continues to climb. 50,000 women were able to use ART to prevent transmission of HIV to unborn children, a strong sign of progress.
However, WHO also notes that 31% of an estimated 9.7 persons who need ART were able to obtain it. More than 6.7 million persons across the world cannot obtain the life-saving therapy.
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Other difficulties the report addresses are the problems in diagnosing HIV in infants, poor patient retention rates and the vast numbers of person who continue to be unaware of their HIV status.
Another serious problem is the related occurrences of tuberculosis worldwide. Tuberculosis is a major cause of death in HIV-infected persons. HIV and tuberculosis services to date are not integrated sufficiently in many areas so that patients can either prevent or treat tuberculosis in addition to HIV treatment.
Finally, the report expresses concerns that access to ART will be impeded by declining health care systems in countries that have the highest HIV rate, and the continuing difficulty of training and retaining health care professionals in those countries. Highly skilled personnel tend to leave for other occupations or emigrate to other countries.
The report notes that improving the collection, analysis and publication of public health information is vital to ongoing efforts to prevent and treat HIV. The data collected by countries and organizations offer the source material for the latest estimates of the response to the HIV/AIDS crisis.
More information at:
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2008/pr16/en/index.html
