In 2003, an estimated 5 million people were infected with HIV and 3 million died of AIDS, with both figures having increased from 2002. There are now 40 million people living with HIV / AIDS worldwide, More than half of these live in sub-Saharan Africa. The decline in incidence of HIV infection in Uganda has been well documented and is often held up as an example of what can be achieved.
In 2003, an estimated 5 million people were infected with HIV and 3 million died of AIDS, with both figures having increased from 2002. There are now 40 million people living with HIV / AIDS worldwide, More than half of these live in sub-Saharan Africa. The decline in incidence of HIV infection in Uganda has been well documented and is often held up as an example of what can be achieved.
In 2003, an estimated 5 million people were infected with HIV and 3 million died of AIDS, with both figures having increased from 2002. There are now 40 million people living with HIV / AIDS worldwide, More than half of these live in sub-Saharan Africa. The decline in incidence of HIV infection in Uganda has been well documented and is often held up as an example of what can be achieved.
In 2003, an estimated 5 million people were infected with HIV and 3 million died of AIDS, with both figures having increased from 2002. There are now 40 million people living with HIV / AIDS worldwide, More than half of these live in sub-Saharan Africa. The decline in incidence of HIV infection in Uganda has been well documented and is often held up as an example of what can be achieved.
IJE International Epidemiological Association 2004; all rights reserved.
International Journal of Epidemiology 2004;33:12
DOI: 10.1093/ije/dyh167 Commentary: Still dying of ignorance? Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention strategies revisited Margaret May In 1987 there was an advertising campaign in the UK which started with a volcano erupting and moved on to show a man chiselling on a tombstone the letters AIDS. This campaign which gave advice on how to prevent transmission of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) had as its strap line Dont die of ignorance. The implication of this message is that AIDS is a preventable disease provided we are in possession of certain knowledge which we use to inform our behaviour. Seventeen years later has the promise of that campaign been fulfilled? The volcano has certainly erupted: figures released by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) show that globally in 2003, an estimated 5 million people were infected with HIV and 3 million died of AIDS, with both figures having increased from 2002. 1 This increase is not confined to developing nations: in the US there has been a 5% increase in HIV infections over the past 3 years according to figures released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 1 UNAIDS estimates that worldwide there are now 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS. More than half of these live in sub-Saharan Africa where prevalence rates are as high as 40% in countries such as Botswana and Swaziland. HIV is truly a biological weapon of mass destruction (WMD). In 2004 there is no doubt that the pandemic is becoming worse, causing devastation in Africa and threatening to engulf India and other parts of Asia. So the general picture is very gloomy, but there are some success stories, one of which is the marked decline in incidence of HIV infection in Uganda. This decline has been well documented and is often held up as an example of what can be achieved. 2 The paper by Stoneburner and Low-Beer in this issue of the International Journal of Epidemiology 3 analyses the factors leading to the decline and argues that it is crucial to understand this Ugandan success in disrupting the spread of HIV if similar policies are to be implemented elsewhere in Africa. Uganda implemented a traditional public health approach to the problem of prevention of HIV infection. The government ran campaigns to warn people of the risk and provided risk reduction information and education as early as 1987, the same year as the tombstone advertisement in the UK. The thrust of the message was AIDS is to be feared, casual sex has consequences, love carefully and zero graze (practise monogamy), and care for people with AIDS rather than stigmatize them. Stoneburner and De Beer 3 analysed HIV prevalence among pregnant women in Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, and Malawi using data collected from antenatal clinics between 1991 and 1998. In Uganda the overall HIV prevalence rate fell by 54% from 21% in 1991 to less than 10% in 1998. There was an even greater decline in prevalence of 75% in the1519 year age group whose rate fell from 21% to 5%. The reduction in HIV prevalence in Uganda has been attributed to increased condom use, sexual abstinence, delaying first sexual experience, reduction of multiple partners, provision of clinics to treat sexually transmitted diseases (STD), and voluntary coun- selling and testing programmes. 4 It is likely that all these measures contributed to the decline, but, according to this paper, the key behavioural change was a 60% reduction in multiple sexual partners. 3 Their evidence is based on comparisons with Kenya, Zambia, and Malawi, countries which did not show a decline in HIV prevalence over the same period. The authors examined data from Demographic and Health Surveys in these countries over the same time period which revealed that all countries had similar levels of primary sexual abstinence and increased condom use, but that reduction in number of partners occurred only in Uganda; the rates of multiple sexual partnerships in the other countries remained similar to that in Uganda in 1989. Their conclusions are that reducing the number of sexual partners was critical to interrupting the transmission of HIV in Uganda, particularly amongst young adults, and that current rates of condom usage in other African countries are insufficient to affect the spread of the virus. 3 It would appear that estimates of the level to which universal condom promotion would reduce HIV infection rates in Africa were over-optimistic and nave. Countries such as Zimbabwe achieved the same condom use as Uganda, but their HIV pre- valence continues to rise. Attributing Ugandas success to condom use is still occurring, for example, in a commentary in the Lancet on HIV in children. 5 Stoneburner and Low-Beer maintain that this focus on condom use is deflecting attention from the real explanation for HIV declines in Uganda. They claim that a successful campaign to reduce multiple sexual partnerships is a social vaccine for AIDS with 80% efficacy. Furthermore, it is a solution developed by communities in Africa that could avert millions of deaths and prove more effective than any potential bio-medical approach. 3 Are there other lessons to be learnt from Uganda? The Ugandan communities were urged not to blame those infected with HIV, but to care for them. What happens in communities where the opposite happens? Stigmatization of those with HIV positive status leads to concealment which results in further infections. Women who live in strongly patriarchal societies who become HIV infected often suffer discrimination and stigma- tization. They may be shunned or cast out of normal society and 1 of 2 (All websites accessed 30 January 2004.) University of Bristol, Canynge Hall, Whiteladies Road, Bristol BS8 2PR, UK. E-mail: [email protected] Int. J. Epidemiol. Advance Access published May 6, 2004 not receive care. This situation may result in women who become HIV positive being driven to prostitution as the only way of surviving and hence becoming instruments in spreading the disease further. 1 Forty per cent of governments worldwide have yet to adopt anti-discrimination laws to protect people who are infected with HIV. Vertical transmission of HIV from mother to child resulted in 800 000 children being infected in 2002. 6 In Uganda, the prevention of transmission of HIV amongst young adults will have been a powerful factor in preventing babies being born HIV positive. However, the growth of the paediatric pandemic, particularly in Africa, requires more urgent action. In particular, when women know they are HIV positive, they may wish to avoid becoming pregnant, but their contraceptive needs are not currently being met due to inadequate health services provision resulting in unwanted pregnancies. 7 Furthermore, antiretroviral drugs administered to pregnant women who are HIV positive can reduce peripartum transmission rates to around 5% in breast- feeding populations. 8 Unfortunately, the estimated coverage for the uptake of this intervention is currently only around 5% of all African HIV-infected pregnant women. 6 A powerful part of the Ugandan public health campaign, and also of that in the UK in 1987, was to instil a fear of HIV infection which altered high-risk sexual behaviours in individuals. Unfortunately, in 2004 there is evidence of complacency, parti- cularly in developed countries where HIV infection is no longer seen as a death sentence as effective antiretroviral drugs are available. There has been an increase in other STD which may presage a new increase in HIV incidence. France, Ireland, The Netherlands, and the UK have reported outbreaks of syphilis in men who have sex with men and in England and Wales diagnoses of gonorrhoea at sexually transmitted infection clinics rose by 102% in 19952002. 1 People are not dying of ignorance, but of lack of implementa- tion of scientific knowledge. The theme for the AIDS 2004 conference in Bangkok, Thailand, is Access for All reflecting the need for us to make the multitude of scientific knowledge and experience accessible to all, at every level of the fight against HIV/AIDS. 9 It is to be hoped that the AIDS 2004 conference will act as further impetus in mobilizing the political will of all nations to tackle the problem of HIV infection which is the real WMD threatening global security and peace. References 1 UNAIDS. AIDS epidemic update December 2003. http://www.unaids. org/wad/2003/Epiupdate2003_en 2 UNAIDS. A measure of success in Uganda. UNAIDS, 1998. 3 Stoneburner RL, Low-Beer D. Sexual partner reductions explain HIV declines in Uganda: comparative analyses of HIV and behavioural data in Uganda, Kenya, Malawi and Zambia. Int J Epidemiol 2004;DOI: 10.1093/ije/dyh094. 4 Asiimwe-Okiror G, Opio AA, Musinguzi J, Madraa E, Tembo G, Caral M. Changes in sexual behaviour and decline in HIV infection among young pregnant women in urban Uganda. AIDS 1997;11: 175763. 5 Dabis F. Children and HIV in Africa: what is next? Lancet 2003;362: 159798. 6 UNAIDS. HIV/AIDS epidemiological surveillance update for the WHO African region 2002. http://www.unaids.org/Unaids/EN/Resources/ Epidemiology/epi_recent_publications/ 7 Dabis F, Ekpini ER. HIV-1/AIDS and maternal and child health in Africa. Lancet 2002;362:85968. 8 Dabis F, Ekouevi DK, Rouet F et al. Effectiveness of a short course of zidovudine lamivudine and peripartum nerivapine to prevent HIV-1 mother-to-child transmission: the ANRS DITRAME-PLUS trial, Abidjan, Cote dIvoire. Antivir Ther 2003;8(Suppl.1):s23637. 9 Access for all: XV International AIDS Conference, Bangkok, Thailand 2004. http://www.aids2004.org 2 of 2 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EPIDEMIOLOGY Source: COI footage file, Film-Images.
Role of Electronic Media On Intervention and Control of HIV/AIDS Among The Young People in Teso Broad Casting Service Radio and Soroti Municipality, Uganda (WWW - Kiu.ac - Ug)