WB releases study for HIV/AIDS prevention

PanARMENIAN.Net - On the eve of a UN summit to renew global efforts to reverse the HIV/AIDS pandemic, 30 years after the first discovery of the HIV virus, a new World Bank study urges governments and their development donors to provide better HIV prevention, care, and treatment services for men who have sex with men (MSM) as an essential step toward reversing the global epidemic.

More than 25 million people have died of HIV/AIDS since the virus was first clinically identified in 1981.

Written in close partnership with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the new study - Global HIV Epidemics Among Men Who Have Sex with Men (MSM): Epidemiology, Prevention, Access to Care and Human Rights - provides the first comprehensive economic analysis of evidence that MSM are at significantly higher risk for HIV infection than other groups in many low- and middle-income countries, where fewer than 1 in 10 MSM worldwide have access to even basic HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and treatment services.

The study authors identify four scenarios that describe the current state of the HIV epidemic among MSM in low- and middle-income countries, and assess the cost to improve the situation for MSM.

The four regional scenarios are: 1 – Where MSM have the most numbers of HIV infection in the population (South America); 2 – Countries with large numbers of infections among intravenous drug users, in which infections among MSM are also substantial (Eastern Europe and Central Asia); 3 – MSM risks of infection occur within widespread HIV epidemics among heterosexuals (sub-Saharan Africa); and 4 – MSM, intravenous drug users, and heterosexual transmissions all contribute significantly to the HIV epidemic (Southeast Asia).

To better protect MSM from HIV risks, the authors recommend a minimum package of essential services, including: counseling, distribution of condoms and other safe sex measures, community-based prevention efforts, HIV testing, and increased use of antiretroviral therapy treatment or ARV.