U.N. warns AIDS could spike if countries drop guard

U.N. warns AIDS could spike if countries drop guard
A volunteer from the AIDS control society takes part in a campaign for AIDS awareness program in the northern Indian city of Chandigarh October 28, 2007. The United Nations has slashed its estimates of how many people are infected with the AIDS virus, from nearly 40 million to 33 million. (Ajay Verma/Reuters)LONDON (Reuters) - The world risks a resurgence of the AIDSepidemic if countries let their guard down, United Nationsofficials cautioned on Tuesday.
Lower estimates of how many people are infected with thevirus, and more effective treatments, are causing countries torelax their vigilance, they said.
Earlier, the U.N. AIDS agency slashed its estimates of howmany people are infected from nearly 40 million to 33 million,mainly due to revised figures for India. It said better methodsof collecting data showed it is not quite a common as feared..
But officials said evidence also showed the epidemic wascreeping back in countries that have become less careful,mainly industrialised nations where many people with AIDS haveaccess to drugs that can extend their lives.
"We are seeing a return of the epidemic," Paul De Lay ofUNAIDS told reporters. "We are seeing that in the U.S., we areseeing that in the UK, we are seeing that in Germany and we areseeing that in the developing world also."
Each day there are more than 6,800 new HIV infections and5,700 AIDS-related deaths, ensuring that the disease will posea major health concern for years, UNAIDS said.
"The sheer scale of the epidemic compared to other diseasesis so much more vast," De Lay said. "The epidemic is justwaiting to come back if programs are reduced."
The U.N. agency said the single biggest reason for thisreduction was a push to better assess India's HIV epidemic.After originally estimating some 5.7 million people wereinfected in India, the U.N. more than halved that estimate, to2.5 million, in July.
Experts and AIDS advocacy groups have long criticized theagency's numbers as too high, and some said there was no way totell if the new report was any better without universaltesting.
Kevin De Cock, director of the World Health Organization'sDepartment of HIV/AIDS said the implications for dealing withthe disease were the same despite the lower estimates.
"This remains the leading infectious disease challenge topublic health even if some of these figures are adjusted," hetold reporters in a telephone briefing . "We are facing decadesof this problem."
(Reporting by Michael Kahn and Maggie Fox; editing byRobert Hart)