UN calls for ‘exceptional response’ to Aids crisis
JOHANNESBURG, Dec 1: The United Nations used World Aids Day on Thursday to call for an ‘exceptional response’ to the global crisis as African patients criticized politicians for failing to tackle a disease that kills millions each year. The United Nations said that while adult infection rates had dropped in some countries, the epidemic continued to grow.
The number of people living with HIV, the virus that causes Aids, had reached its highest level ever in 2005 at an estimated 40.3 million people, UNAIDS Executive Director Peter Piot said.
Nearly half of them are women.
Aids has killed more than three million people in 2005.
“The lessons of nearly 25 years into the Aids epidemic are clear. Investments made in HIV prevention break the cycle of new infections. By making these investments, each and every country can reverse the spread of Aids,” Piot said.
A number of Asian countries marked the day by offering mobile phone games and holding flag-festooned rallies to promote awareness of the disease.
The mood was more sombre in Africa, where rage and remorse combined as the continent worst hit by the global crisis remembered its dead.
“Money that has been earmarked for HIV/Aids has gone into everything else but Aids,” fumed Meris Kafusi, a 64-year-old Aids patient in Tanzania who only recently began receiving life-prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) drugs.
“Organizations that say they are dealing with Aids are always in seminars or workshops. They should be buying food for widows and orphans ... but instead of that, you find them earning daily allowances of $50 for sitting in a room discussing us. Is this fair?”
Sub-Saharan Africa remains ground zero for worldwide HIV/Aids deaths as well as for new infections — cutting life expectancy in many countries, leaving millions of children orphaned and reducing agricultural output in hungry countries.
The latest UN estimates say 26 million of the 40 million people infected with HIV worldwide live in Africa.
Political leaders say taboos need to be broken to tackle Aids.
India says it has 5.13 million people living with HIV/Aids, the second largest number after South Africa.
China’s government, worried that the spread of Aids could damage the country’s economic development, was due to launch an Aids awareness campaign to educate millions of migrant workers — farmers who flock to cities in search of higher-paying jobs.
Health Minister Gao Qiang said on Wednesday that China aimed to keep the number of people infected by HIV virus to below 1.5 million by 2010, a forecast sharply lower than the World Health Organization (WHO) estimate of 10 million if nothing is done.
The WHO’s chief China representative, Henk Bekedam, said China had made some progress in slowing the rise in infection rates.
Estimates of Aids’ extent in China, which was long secretive about the disease, are clouded by uncertainty and controversy.
But the anti-Aids message is still falling on deaf ears in some parts of the world.—Reuters
