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Berlin / Thomas Block, Dieter Keller
28.07.2018
In fact says Holger Wicht of the German Aids-Hilfe, has already accomplished a lot in the fight against the HIV virus. "The drama that AIDS has had in the '80s and' 90s, you really do not want to come back," he says. "It was an unforgettable and terrible time." The infection was life threatening and the epidemic was spreading rapidly around the world.
Today, it is different. The World AIDS Conference has once again scientifically confirmed what we already knew: a modern HIV-positive person under treatment has so few viruses that he can no longer catch anyone. It would have been a sensational news 20 years ago.
In these sensational times, the 22nd World AIDS Conference in Amsterdam ended yesterday. 3000 research papers from 100 countries were presented and 15,000 people attended the opening on Sunday. Medical progress has also meant that the disease does not receive as much attention as some would like.
"HIV is a topic that deserves a lot of attention," says Wicht. "Many people are still dying of AIDS, although we can prevent that." In fact, the UN had set as ambitious goal to end the epidemic by 2030. But in some 50 countries, the number of infected people is increasing.
In 2017, 36.9 million people worldwide were infected with HIV, most in Africa, according to UNAids, a United Nations organization. One in four do not know that he is infected. During the past year, 1.8 million people have been newly infected and 940,000 have died of AIDS-related illnesses. Nevertheless, only 21.7 million people in the world receive the necessary medications, about 60% of those infected.
"It's a disaster," says Wicht. "There must be the global community, Germany has to help financially". According to Aidshilfe, UNAIDS lacks 50 million euros for the current year. "UNAIDS does not even know how to fund its program by the end of the year." This is particularly dramatic as the countries most infected with HIV depend on the work of these organizations.
A Harvard study Assuming that 80% of the funds for the fight against the disease come from development aid in the most affected countries. "We have all the means to control the HIV epidemic and stop AIDS, but too many people are excluded from prevention and treatment." Many people are infected, fall ill and die because do too little, "says Sven Warminsky of the board of the German AIDS Aid organization
Experts are particularly concerned about the rise of new infections in Eastern Europe and Asia There are 130,000 new HIV-infected people every year, 80% of them in Russia, and only a minority have access to medicines, says UNAIDS. "This is particularly dramatic because effective methods are not available. not used here for ideological reasons, "says Wicht." In Russia, heterosexual loyalty is emphasized as a central preventive measure. "This has nothing to do with the reality of life. These would come from infected syringes during drug use.
According to estimates by the Robert Koch Institute, a total of 88,400 people were living with HIV in Germany at the end of 2016. Every seventh did not know about his infection. Newly infected in Germany 2,500 men and 570 women. In Baden-Württemberg at the end of 2016, there were around 10,000 infected people, including a quarter of women. 300 people were newly infected in the southwest, 45 died
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