GENEVA, Nov 26, (Agencies):  The spread of HIV and AIDS among millions of people could be slowed if addicts who inject drugs were treated as medical patients rather than as criminals, the International Federation of the Red Cross said Friday.
More than 80 percent of the world’s governments “are inclined to artificial realities, impervious to the evidence that treating people who inject drugs as criminals is a failed policy that contributes to the spread of HIV,” the Red Cross said.
An estimated 16 million people worldwide inject drugs, mainly because it delivers the fastest, most intense high, in what has become a growing trend on every continent, according to the Red Cross.
The launch of the International Federation of the Red Cross’ 24-page report — essentially to promote a new strategy for nations to stop the spread of the virus among injecting drug users — comes in the week before World AIDS Day on Dec 1.
The federation, which represents national Red Cross chapters in almost every country of the world, suggests ways to lessen the risk that addicts will contract the virus from tainted blood transmitted through shared needles.
It also points out that many of the addicts are selling sex to pay for their habits, which “massively increases the likelihood of spreading HIV into an unsuspecting public.”
More than 3 million people who inject drugs now have HIV — almost one-tenth of all the 33.3 million people worldwide who are infected with HIV.
In the United States, about 56,000 people, many of them injecting drug users, become infected each year, a rate that has held steady for about a decade. But many of those who are infected don’t know it and spread the virus unwittingly, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
For years the US-based organization recommended routine testing, mainly for intravenous drug users and other people at high risk. If new infections are discovered early enough, HIV patients can be treated with drugs potent enough to postpone the slide into full-blown AIDS.
Meanwhile, the Red Cross report says China, Malaysia, Russia, Ukraine and Vietnam have “mega-epidemics” of injecting drug use. In some countries, such as Russia, Georgia and Iran, drug-injecting users account for more than 60 percent of HIV infections.
The Red Cross calls the increasing rate of HIV infection among drug users who use needles “a public health emergency” and recommends more governments provide health services such as substitute drug therapy and clean needle and syringe exchanges.
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MANILA: The Philippines on Thursday reported a sharp jump in HIV-AIDS cases which runs against a global trend of declining infection rates, with young homosexual men most at risk.
There were 1,305 confirmed new HIV infections in first 10 months of the year, compared with 835 for the whole of 2009, the health ministry said.
Sex between men accounted for nearly 80 percent of all cases this year, and more than half of those infected were aged between 20 and 29.
“From 2007 there has been a shift in the predominant trend of sexual transmission from heterosexual contact to males having sex with males,” a health ministry report said.
The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) attacks the human body’s immune system, rendering it defenceless against infections and leading to AIDS.
Teresita Marie Bagasao, country coordinator of the UNAIDS programme, said that among all countries in Asia, only the Philippines and Bangladesh were now reporting increases in cases, with others stable or decreasing.
The United Nations also reported Tuesday that the number of new cases of HIV/AIDS around the world had dropped by about one-fifth over the past decade.
“They (Philippine authorities) need to actually address the factors which lead to infections,” Bagasao told AFP.
“Providing treatment can only be sustainable if there is a very strong and comprehensive programme of preventing further infections.”
She said the government needs to educate those at high risk, and provide them with condoms.
Apart from sexual contact, 11 percent of all new Philippine HIV cases were transmitted through needle-sharing by injecting drug users, and one percent were transmitted by a mother to her baby.