Pan American Health Organization makes World Aids Day appeal to men to help control AIDS epidemic
Washington, November 30, 2000 - The Pan American Health Organization today appealed to men to "exert their influence to help control the AIDS epidemic by avoiding behaviors that put them at risk of HIV infection and transmitting the infection to their sex partners."
In a message for World Aids Day, observed Dec. 1, PAHO Director Dr. George Alleyne said, "We are committed to encouraging men to adopt healthy behaviors and to participate fully in the health care of their partners and their entire families. At the same time, we recognize the need to pay due attention to the prevention of health problems among women as well and not forget that awareness and sensitization about HIV and AIDS must be oriented to both men and women."
"We are committed to escalating the battle against this disease. Each and every one of us can and should work to make a difference," Dr. Alleyne said. The World AIDS Day theme for 2000 is "Men make a difference."
The latest figures from the Americas show that one person in every 200 in North America and Latin America are infected with HIV, while in the Caribbean that proportion is nearly four times higher. "In the United States and Canada widespread access to antiretroviral therapy has dramatically decreased AIDS mortality but new infections have not decreased appreciably and thus HIV prevalence has increased with approximately 900,000 persons now living with HIV," according to a new report from PAHO.
"The Latin American and Caribbean Region, with eight percent of the world's population, is home to 4.9 percent of the people living with HIV at the beginning of the 21st century. Around 1.3 million people in Latin America and another 360,000 in the Caribbean are now living with HIV. Many of these men, women and children will die over the next decade, joining the 557,000 people that have already died of AIDS in the Region since the epidemic began two decades ago. In 1999 there were over twice as many new HIV infections as there were AIDS deaths. Indeed, some 567 people were infected with HIV in Latin America and the Caribbean every day of 1999 - an ominous record with which to enter a new century," said the report, called HIV and AIDS in the Americas: An Epidemic with Many Faces.
The report was produced by researchers and scientists from the Pan American Health Organization, the World Health Organization, and the UNAIDS program, who said, "Due to the wide diversity of HIV epidemics these regional figures mask huge differences in epidemic levels and in patterns of transmission."
Dr. Alleyne said, "The world AIDS epidemic has reached alarming proportions. We estimate that HIV or AIDS has infected more than 34 million people worldwide, and already some 19 million have died as a result of this disease."
In North America, the PAHO report noted, "There is little evidence that new HIV infections are falling. Indeed there is some evidence that death-postponing therapy is leading to complacency and that risk behavior is actually on the rise in the gay community and perhaps elsewhere. Overall, however, it is clear that both the HIV and the AIDS epidemics are becoming increasingly concentrated in ethnic minorities and disadvantaged sections of the population."
In the United States, around 40,000 people become newly infected with HIV every year, over two thirds of them men. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that one half of the new infections in men and close to two thirds in women occur in the black population, even though this group makes up under one fifth of the US population. One quarter of all new HIV infections are among injecting drug users, and some 42 percent of people infected every year are infected in sex between men. Heterosexual sex without condoms accounts for most of the remaining infections. With 0.8 percent of adults estimated to be HIV positive, the United States has the highest prevalence of any developed country.
The PAHO report said that "In most countries in the Latin America and the Caribbean for which information is available, the highest rates of HIV infection are found in sub-populations of people whose behaviors leaves them extremely vulnerable to contracting the virus. These sub-populations include men who have sex with other men, men and women who inject drugs, prisoners, street children and other marginalized groups, including some ethnic minorities. Youth, whose sexuality is often ignored in planning prevention and care services, can also be considered to be at higher than average risk of HIV infection."
Many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, the report noted, have "no information at all about infection levels or risk behaviors in sub-populations especially vulnerable to HIV infection. This is unlikely to be because such risk behavior does not exist. It is, rather, because it has been overlooked, deliberately or otherwise. Homosexual behavior is illegal in many countries of the Region and injecting drug use is illegal in all of them. Besides being illegal, these behaviors are widely frowned on and frequently denied, sometimes even by the people who engage in them. Because members of sub-populations with high risk behavior are also part of the wider population, the behaviors that expose them to HIV infection may also eventually expose the men and women with whom they interact, even when those men and women do not share the risk behavior. Societies should therefore be driven by self interest -- as well as by moral obligation -- to provide information and services that meet the needs of sub-populations at high risk of contracting or passing on HIV."
Although in some countries -- principally the United States and Canada -- gay culture is well established and it is relatively easy to reach men in these communities with information and services that help them reduce the risk of HIV infection, the report said, "In most of Latin America and the Caribbean, a predominantly macho culture has stunted the development of gay identities as has led to widespread denial of male-male sex, at a societal and sometimes at a personal level. Getting appropriate HIV prevention services to men who have sex with men but who do not consider themselves gay has proven a major challenge in many countries." Despite increasing infection rates in women, male-male sex remains the biggest single cause of new HIV infections in several countries, including Canada, the United States and Mexico, it noted.
The Pan American Health Organization, which also serves as the Regional Office of the World Health Organization, has almost 100 years of experience in working with the countries of the Americas to improve the health and raise the living standards of their peoples.
For more information, please contact: Daniel Epstein, Office of Public Information, (202) 974-3459, epsteind@paho.org