Booze Consumption By Country

From a just-published report by the World Health Organization. The Economist sums things up:

The biggest boozers are mostly found in Europe and in the former Soviet states. Moldovans are the most bibulous, getting through 18.2 litres each, nearly 2 litres more than the Czechs in second place. Over 10 litres of a Moldovan's annual intake is reckoned to be 'unrecorded' home-brewed liquor, making it particularly harmful to health. Such moonshine accounts for almost 30% of the world's drinking. The WHO estimates that alcohol results in 2.5m deaths a year, more than AIDS or tuberculosis. In Russia and its former satellite states one in five male deaths is caused by drink.

Information-laden country-by-country PDFs are here.

United Nations: HIV Peaked In '96, Others Call To Move Funding Elsewhere

Experts from the World Health Organization and UNAIDS said yesterday that the global number of people with AIDS has been unchanged for two years and that the HIV outbreak period probably peaked in 1996.

Daniel Halperin, an AIDS expert at Harvard University, said it was good news the rate of new infections was dropping and that access to AIDS drugs was helping to cut the death rate. Earlier this year, the U.N. announced there are now 4 million people on lifesaving AIDS drugs worldwide, a 10-fold increase in five years. In the report by the World Health Organization and UNAIDS, the experts estimate there are now about 33.4 million people worldwide with HIV. In 2007, the figure was about 33.2 million. The numbers are based on a mathematical model and come with a margin of error of several million people.

The news has renewed calls to redirect research and treatment funding to diseases other than HIV/AIDS.

With the U.N.'s confirmation HIV is now declining in most countries, some experts said the report should change the spending habits of international donors. Globally, HIV causes about 4 percent of all deaths, but gets about 23 cents of every public health dollar. "We shouldn't let this single disease continue to distort overall global funding, especially when bigger killers like pneumonia and diarrhea in developing countries are far easier and cheaper to treat," said Philip Stevens, of International Policy Network, a London-based think tank. [snip]Stevens said the fact that AIDS peaked more than a decade ago suggests it is now time for the global community to prioritize other health problems. Outside of the worst-affected countries such as South Africa, respiratory infections, heart disease and malaria are bigger killers. "Against this backdrop, it is unjust that AIDS should commandeer such a disproportionate level of funding," Stevens said.

World Health Organization: HIV #1 Cause Of Death & Disease For Women Worldwide

According to a just-released report (PDF) from the World Health Organization, the worldwide leading cause of death and disease for women 15-44 years-old is HIV/AIDS.

Globally, HIV is the leading cause of death and disease in women of reproductive age. Of the 30.8 million adults living with HIV in 2007, 15.5 million were women. The prevalence of HIV infection in women has increased since the early 1990s and is most marked in sub-Saharan Africa. Southern Africa is most affected; in 2005–2006, median HIV prevalence among pregnant women attending antenatal care was above 15% in eight Southern African countries. Infection was acquired primarily through heterosexual transmission. In all regions, HIV disproportionately affects female sex workers and injecting drug users, as well as the female partners of infected males.

Women’s particular vulnerability to HIV infection stems from a combination of biological factors and gender inequality. Some studies show that women are more likely than men to acquire HIV from an infected partner during unprotected heterosexual intercourse. The risk posed by this biological difference is compounded in cultures that limit women’s knowledge about HIV and their ability to negotiate safer sex. Stigma, violence by intimate partners, and sexual violence further increase women’s vulnerability.

Influenza A (H1N1)

New from WHO:

The World Health Organisation (WHO), bowing to pressure from meat industry producers and concerned governments, said on Thursday it would refer to a deadly new virus strain as influenza A (H1N1), not swine flu. "From today, WHO will refer to the new influenza virus as 'influenza A (H1N1)'," it said on its site. The new strain has infected 257 people. The WHO has confirmed eight deaths although many more people are suspected to have died from the virus. It derives from a swine influenza virus but the new strain has been found only in people. While it contains mostly swine flu genetic sequences, it also contains small amounts of human and bird flu virus genetic material. No pigs have been confirmed to be sick with it. WHO has consistently said the disease cannot be caught from eating pork if it is prepared properly.

But people here will still say "swine."

WHO: AIDS Is Over (Except For Africans And Gays And Sex Workers And...)

Via the Independent (UK):

A quarter of a century after the outbreak of Aids, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has accepted that the threat of a global heterosexual pandemic has disappeared.

In the first official admission that the universal prevention strategy promoted by the major Aids organisations may have been misdirected, Kevin de Cock, the head of the WHO's department of HIV/Aids said there will be no generalised epidemic of Aids in the heterosexual population outside Africa.

Dr De Cock, an epidemiologist who has spent much of his career leading the battle against the disease, said understanding of the threat posed by the virus had changed. Whereas once it was seen as a risk to populations everywhere, it was now recognised that, outside sub-Saharan Africa, it was confined to high-risk groups including men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, and sex workers and their clients.

Dr De Cock said: "It is very unlikely there will be a heterosexual epidemic in other countries. Ten years ago a lot of people were saying there would be a generalised epidemic in Asia – China was the big worry with its huge population. That doesn't look likely. But we have to be careful. As an epidemiologist it is better to describe what we can measure. There could be small outbreaks in some areas."

In 2006, the Global Fund for HIV, Malaria and Tuberculosis, which provides 20 per cent of all funding for Aids, warned that Russia was on the cusp of a catastrophe. An estimated 1 per cent of the population was infected, mainly through injecting drug use, the same level of infection as in South Africa in 1991 where the prevalence of the infection has since risen to 25 per cent.

Dr De Cock said: "I think it is unlikely there will be extensive heterosexual spread in Russia. But clearly there will be some spread."

Aids still kills more adults than all wars and conflicts combined, and is vastly bigger than current efforts to address it. A joint WHO/UN Aids report published this month showed that nearly three million people are now receiving anti-retroviral drugs in the developing world, but this is less than a third of the estimated 9.7 million people who need them. In all there were 33 million people living with HIV in 2007, 2.5 million people became newly infected and 2.1 million died of Aids.

Aids organisations, including the WHO, UN Aids and the Global Fund, have come under attack for inflating estimates of the number of people infected, diverting funds from other health needs such as malaria, spending it on the wrong measures such as abstinence programmes rather than condoms, and failing to build up health systems.

Stories like this will further the increasingly loud calls to reduce spending on HIV research and treatment and to redirect funds to other diseases.