Could concentrated HIV epidemics make AIDS unbeatable?

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Could concentrated HIV epidemics make AIDS unbeatable?

By Kate Kelland, Health and Science Correspondent LONDON (Reuters) - HIV epidemics are becoming more concentrated in marginalized groups such as sex workers, drug users and gay men, and could defy global attempts to combat AIDS if attitudes do not change, a U.N. expert said. Michel Kazatchkine, U.N. Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe, says he would like to be able to celebrate without reservation global progress made in the past decade, but stubborn infection rates and alarming growth of outbreaks in hard-to-reach populations make that difficult. The risk, he says, is that as the world turns the tide of the global AIDS epidemic, the virus will return to being a disease that plagues only certain groups and the political will to overcome it may fade. "Then the AIDS epidemic will become more and more a sum of these concentrated epidemics." EXTRAORDINARY PROGRESS Some 35.3 million people worldwide are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS, but the rising number of patients reflects great strides in recent years in developing sophisticated HIV tests and combination AIDS drugs and getting them to many of those who need them to stay alive.

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