HIV/AIDS infection rates are growing among drugs users, sex workers and gay
men around the globe, according the International Federation of the Red Cross
and the Red Crescent's 2008 Disasters Report.

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND (JUNE 25, 2008 ) REUTERS -
HIV/AIDS infection rates are growing among intravenous drug users,
prostitutes and gay men around the globe but they are often viewed as outcasts
and refused treatment, according to the International Federation of the Red
Cross and Red Crescent's 2008 annual report on Disasters.
    "The bad news is that as the epidemic plateaus, it is getting more
and more concentrated in certain populations, and those are the poorest, most
stigmatised, the drug users, the sex workers, their partners, and so on. So we
see we still have a seriously important epidemic but it is now distributed in
parts of the world and it's not equally distributed all over the world,"
the IFRC's Secretary General Special Representative for HIV and AIDS told a
news conference today (June 25).
    Those groups, living on the fringes of society in many countries and
especially in the developing world, "often face stigma, criminalisation
and little, if any, access to prevention and treatment services, according to
the report.
    The 248-page study, an annual World Disasters Report, gave no new
figures for AIDS sufferers but cited United Nations statistics that 2.1
million died from the disease last year.
    The Federation also said the HIV virus was at the root of a rolling
social crisis across southern Africa.
    Its officials told a news conference the recent upheaval in Zimbabwe --
where until recently the battle against AIDS had benefited from a widespread
treatment network -- could disrupt medical care and make that situation
worse.
    "We have agreed now to double our targets in Zimbabwe and we feel
that unless we do this, the effect of the general crisis of food in the
country, especially the food prices and the rising food prices that most of
the people cannot get that, the most targeted people or the most affected
people will the people living with HIV - AIDS and orphan children, so we
decided to double our numbers and we go from 140 thousand to 260
thousand," the body's deputy secretary general Ibrahim Osman said.
    The Federation said it centred its 2008 World Disasters Report on the
immune-destroying disease rather than floods or earthquakes because for many
communities the epidemic "is undoubtedly a disaster."
    "In our scale-up over the next few years, our approach is very
much to reach the unreachable, to reach out to groups that are currently not
being touched by programmes, but who hold the key to bringing the whole
pandemic under control. If we don't do that, we will continue to spend
billions at the problem, but we will continue to have this as a major public
health and social challenge," Kapila said.
    There were 405 natural disasters world-wide last year, compared to 423
in 2006, the Federation said. Those killed just under 17,000 people, the
lowest annual figure for a decade, but the numbers affected rose by 40 percent
to 201 million.