Africas AIDS Epidemic Slowing – World Bank
The pace of Africas deadly AIDS epidemic is slowing as communities are empowered to help themselves in tandem with better delivery of condoms and live-saving treatments, a World Bank report “Condoms, Drugs, NGOs, Slow HIV in Africa” said on Wednesday.
Launched in Kigali (Rwanda), the study noted a marked increase in access to HIV prevention, care and treatment programs. The World Bank report said the epidemic was showing signs of slowing in Uganda, Kenya and Zimbabwe, as well as in urban Ethiopia, Rwanda, Burundi, Malawi and Zambia.
“The mobilization of empowered “grassroots” communities, along with delivering condoms and life-saving treatments, are beginning to slow the pace of the epidemic”, the study said, without giving specific statistics for the decrease.
Southern Africa, however, remains the epicenter of the disease with unprecedented infection rates, the report added.
The study assesses the results of the Banks six-year 1,28 billion US dollar Multi-Country HIV/AIDS Program (MAP), set up in 2000 to increase access to prevention, care and treatment plans.
The reports says there is no single ideal Aids programme and each country must design their own, based on what drives the epidemic in that region. The Bank said HIV/AIDS would remain an enormous economic, social and human challenge to sub-Saharan Africa for the foreseeable future.
Figures from the World Bank put the prevalence of Aids in Rwanda at about 3 per cent, down from 11 per cent seven years ago. On the other hand, in Francistown, a city in Botswana bordering Zimbabwe, 70 per cent of women in their early 30s were found to be HIV-positive, according to a 2004 household survey. Last year, the epidemic killed more than 2 million people in Africa.
Global funding for HIV more than quadrupled between 2001 and 2005, from less than 2 billion dollar to more than 8 billion, but falls short of what countries need, says Joy Phumaphi, of the World Banks Human Development Network, a former health minister of Botswana.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
