Hope from ICAAP

[Guest guest]

Dear Forum,

The 8th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific

(ICAAP) is moving ahead here in Colombo, with a strong message of

hope, anchored on the fact that the world's most populous region

still has relatively low prevalence rates of HIV despite problems of

poverty, discrimination and stigma.

Some 2,500 participants from 70 countries have come to the capital of

this South Asian island nation for the congress, which runs from Aug.

19 to 23. Academics, health experts, activists and people living with

HIV and AIDS will focus on assessing the pandemic in the region,

sharing lessons learned and looking at efforts to contain it.

According to the information given by World Health Organisation (WHO)

authorities, between 2.8 and 9.8 million people were living with HIV

in Asia in 2006. Between 140,000 and 610,000 people died from AIDS-

related illnesses that same year.

But at the same time, it said that the number of people receiving

antiretroviral therapy has risen by more than three-fold since 2003

and had reached some 235,000 people by June 2006. This is about 16

percent of the total number of people in need of antiretroviral

treatment in Asia .

According to UNAIDS, around one million new infections surfaced in

the last two years, 50 percent of which are among young people.

In the past two years after the 7th ICAAP in Kobe , Japan , 640,000

have people died despite the efforts of scaling up treatment services

by countries in the region.

Currently, there are about 5.4 million HIV infections in the Asia-

Pacific region. In Indonesia , China , Vietnam , Nepal , Bangladesh ,

Pakistan , and Papua New Guinea , the number of new infections every

year is increasing.

On a global scale, there are 15 million children under the age of 15

who are AIDS orphans. That means that for every second, a child loses

his or her parents to AIDS

The interesting part of the conference is the release of `Colombo

Declaration " by the Asia Pacific Network Of People Living With

HIV/AIDS.

This declaration says that the region of Asia Pacific has the world's

2nd largest number of people living with HIV i.e 5.9 million. The

region has the capacity to manufacture its own generic HIV medicines

(ARV) however only 19% are receiving them. The declaration says that

more than 300,000people die from AIDS in the Asia Pacific region

every year. The declaration demands an easy access to affordable ARV

and medicines for opportunistic infections and to keep the promise of

Universal access to ARV by 2010 as pledged in the 2006 UNGASS final

declaration.

Surprisingly, no coverage was given to the declaration by the local

Media or organizers.

The other important news from ICAAP was the launch of inititave by

UNODC regarding an Oral substitution therapy " OST " i.e Buprenorphine

for Intravenous Drug Users.Hope from ICAAP is that the IDU's will be

able to get rid of habbit of using drugs

In the Congress once again the same old story of " Positives not

getting the benefit of Insurance scheme " was repeated. It was said

that that the Insurance Companies will not be able to bear the brunt

of paying heavy insurance claims.

There were many persons in the congress who were asking for

facilities of HIV testing but could not find one, the organizers

should think something in this direction.At least I found hundreds of

persons who were interested in knowing their HIV status but were not

able to do do so, may be some kind of Stigma working here.

Hope to get some more from the hopefull ICAAP.

Regards,

Jasvinder Sehgal

e-mail: <jasvindersehgal@...>