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Related sites United Nations Program on HIV and AIDS
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33.6 million infected with HIV, AIDS
Posted
12-6-99 New York. Staggering statistics released last week by the United Nations and the World Health Organization indicate that HIV and AIDS may be the world's greatest public health threat. Despite progress in treating the disease in the United States, HIV and AIDS remain major concerns in most of the world. The problem is most severe in sub-Saharan Africa, where more than two-thirds of the world's 33.6 million victims are located, and for the first time ever the majority of those infected are female. The report, AIDS Epidemic Update-December 1999, was released Dec. 1 to coincide with World AIDS Day. The disease is on the rise in Central and Eastern Europe. It is also increasing in many of the countries of the former Soviet Union, just one of the global trouble spots the report details. In the Russian Federation alone, the number of people infected with HIV nearly doubled in just the first nine months of 1999. Paloma Cuchi, MD, regional adviser in epidemiology for the UN's AIDS program and one of the study's authors, said the increase in Russia cannot be attributed solely to better reporting and surveillance methods. "It's real. It's absolutely astonishing," she said. "HIV hasn't been introduced there into networks of drug users until recently, and this year it hit Moscow. Interestingly, it hasn't yet hit St. Petersburg. We can expect to see a similar explosive growth in St. Petersburg when it arrives there."
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