PARIS, Dec 1 (AFP) - Rallies and media campaigns around the world forced the AIDS scourge back into the international limelight on World AIDS Day Saturday in a bid to maintain awareness of the disease and its dangers.
In South Africa, officially the world's most AIDS infected country with some 4.7 million people diagnosed HIV positive, former president Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu joined government ministers at awareness rallies.
In Pretoria traditional healers spoke out against myths which have taken hold, including one that having sex with a virgin will cure AIDS.
In Zimbabwe, hundreds banged drums and sang at a Harare rally.
In the Ivory Coast capital Abidjan President Laurent Gbagbo received thousands of demonstrators and his wife ceremonially presented him with a condom to demonstrate awareness in a country where one million out of 15 million are HIV positive.
US President George W. Bush has issued a formal proclamation designating Saturday World AIDS Day, calling on the United States to stand together with the world "to fight AIDS on all fronts."
Los Angeles, where there are 40,709 reported cases of AIDS, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, marked Saturday's celebration with a release of red balloons carrying messages of hope and inspiration.
Across Asia, governments and activists alike pushed the message, still apparently unheeded by many Asians, that unprotected sex and needle-sharing can kill.
China was scheduled to broadcast its first televised AIDS awareness programme.
In India, with an estimated five million HIV and AIDS cases, the publicity drive centred on drug addicts passing on the disease by sharing needles.
In Rome, Pope John Paul II said the Roman Catholic Church backed scientists fighting AIDS. In a message to victims, he said: "The Church is at the side of scientists and encourages all those who work tirelessly to cure and hold in check this grave infirmity."
Gro Harlem Brundtland, head of the World Health Organisation (WHO), struck an optimistic note about the fight against AIDS, saying the world was now ready to stop the HIV/AIDS epidemic in its tracks.
In one of the most high profile interventions, Brundtland said: "Over the past year we have seen the start of a real change": governments around the world had started to apply a new openness in confronting the HIV/AIDS epidemic and its devastation of their people.
"Prices of life-saving medicines for those living with HIV, including antiretrovirals, have been greatly reduced," she said in a written statement.
But latest statistics tell a grim tale.
The International Red Cross reminded the world at least five million grandparents in Africa had gone back to being parents as a result of HIV/AIDS. Some 12 million children in the continent have lost one or both parents.
A UN report showed HIV or AIDS cases in Asia and the Pacific had reached 7.1 million, with a staggering 1.07 million adults and children newly infected with HIV in 2001.
The UN refugee agency UNHCR reminded the world vulnerable populations including refugees were increasingly hit by HIV/AIDS. "Women and girls frequently find themselves coerced into sex to gain access to basic needs such as food, shelter and security," it said.
A study commissioned by UNHCR in 1999 in refugee camps in Tanzania showed that some youngsters begin to have sex at the age of 10, and raised concerns about issues such as multiple partners, unprotected sex and the exchange of sex with older males for gifts.
It is estimated that 2,000 people die of AIDS-related disease very week in Zimbabwe, and six of the capital's seven cemeteries are reported full because of the soaring death rate.
Bruntland, however, pointed out that developing countries' ability to take advantage of the flexibility of the World Trade Organisation's agreement on patent protection had been reaffirmed by trade ministers in Doha, Qatar, last month, and that new funds are starting to become available.
She highlighted the Global Fund for AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, describing it as a "groundbreaking mechanism" for bringing together the public and private sectors, plus non-governmental organisations.
"The world is now ready to turn back the epidemic learning from those who have blazed a trail, scaling up best practice and confronting AIDS systematically," Bruntland said. "It will be a long fight."
The NGO Doctors of the World said it was making the anti-AIDS battle one of its priorities for the next five years.
It said that it would particularly fight in less developed countries and among poor people in industrialised countries who it judges are particularly vulnerable.
011201
AF011217
Copyright © AFP or Agence France-Presse, 2001 - All Rights Reserved. AFP articles contained on the AEGiS web site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without AFP's prior written permission. You may make one copy of each article for your personal, non-commercial use only; more copies would require AFP's prior written permission.. http://www.afp.com/
ÆGiS is made possible through unrestricted grants from Boehringer Ingelheim, the National Library of Medicine, and donations from users like you. Always watch for outdated information. This article first appeared in 2001. This material is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between you and your doctor.
©1990, 2001 - ÆGiS. ÆGiS presents published material, reprinted with permission and neither endorses nor opposes any material. All materials appearing on ÆGIS are protected by copyright as a collective work or compilation under U.S. copyright and other laws and are the property of ÆGIS and the Sisters of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, or the party credited as the provider of the content.
