Dec 08, 2006   | COMMENTS     

WASHINGTON (AP) — President George W. Bush marked Worlds AIDS Day last Friday by declaring: “The pandemic of HIV/AIDS can be defeated.” Bush’s AIDS initiative, announced in 2003, is the largest international health initiative dedicated to a single disease. It targets 15 countries that are home to about half of the world’s 39 million people who are HIV-positive. The initiative committed $15 billion over five years to support treatment for 2 million people, prevention for 7 million and care for 10 million. While the president’s treatment program is widely praised, critics of Bush’s initiative complain that the treatment program might not be sustainable, because the number of people with HIV continues to grow. According to the U.N. agency on AIDS, there will be 4.3 million new infections this year.

South Africa aims to halve
new AIDS infections over 5 years

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) — South Africa unveiled a five-year plan last week aimed at cutting the number of new AIDS infections by half. Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka announced the plan at the government’s World AIDS Day event in Nelspruit in the northeastern Mpumalanga province. South Africa has an estimated 5.4 million people living with HIV, the second highest in the world after India. The government, long under fire for doing too little to prevent the spread of AIDS and to promote effective treatments, recently revamped its strategy. The plan for prevention, care and treatment of HIV/AIDS from 2007-2011 has been drawn up in conjunction with government and civil society, including many of the government’s former critics. A final version of the plan is expected to be released in March with clear targets and deadlines that AIDS activists have been demanding.

Europe marks World AIDS Day
with warnings, services, concert

BERLIN (AP) — World AIDS Day brought sobering statements across Europe last week. Ukraine’s President Viktor Yushchenko conceded that his country was losing ground against one of the continent’s fastest-growing epidemics, saying 100,000 Ukrainians have been officially registered as HIV-positive. UNICEF officials warn that Europe may see a catastrophe in its eastern members and neighbors, with 270,000 people counted as infected in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, some 90 percent of them infected through intravenous drug abuse. In Moscow, dozens of believers lit candles and joined in a prayer service in the small Church of St. Catherine the Great Martyr, part of the U.S. based Orthodox Church in America. The Russian Health Ministry said Russia aspired to provide equal access by all HIV sufferers to anti-retroviral drug therapies. The number of officially registered cases of HIV has reached 362,000, the country’s chief epidemiologist says, but international agencies and some Russian experts have said the true number of HIV-infected people in Russia is closer to 1 million.

On World AIDS day,
Asian nations fight stigma

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — AIDS Day commemorations were done creatively in Asia. More than 8 million people were living with HIV in Asia in 2005, and roughly 520,000 people died of AIDS across the region, according to the United Nations. In most Asian countries, the epidemics are driven by a combination of intravenous drug use and unprotected sex, much of it commercial. In Thailand, AIDS activists planned Friday evening to create the world’s “Longest Condom Chain,” a ribbon of 25,000 condoms intended to raise awareness about the disease. In China, taxi drivers handed out angel-shaped cards with information about preventing the disease and reducing discrimination against people with HIV. China’s Health Ministry said last week that the number of reported HIV/AIDS cases rose by almost 30 percent to 183,733 in the first 10 months of this year, from 144,089 cases at the end of last year.

U.N. chief calls for political,
public accountability in AIDS fight

NEW YORK (AP) — U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called on people ahead of World AIDS Day last week to hold their leaders accountable and to keep momentum strong in the fight against AIDS. At a public commemoration ceremony held at St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York on Nov. 30, Annan told the audience that the virus, which has killed 25 million people and infected 40 million more, is “the greatest challenge of our generation,” but noted changing attitudes in the last decade. This year marks the 19th World AIDS Day, the 25th year since the first case of AIDS was identified and 10 years since the formation ...