UNAIDS Press Release: Barcelona - Sunday, 7 July 2002
"It is now clear that the AIDS epidemic is still in its early stages. And let us be equally clear: our fight back is at an even earlier stage," said Dr Piot, Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). He challenged the audience "to fight AIDS on the political stage - where global struggles over power and resources are fought. Governments have promised money - increases in development assistance at Monterrey, money for AIDS by the G8, and 15 percent of national budgets on health by African leaders meeting in Abuja. The promises have been made. Now they must be kept."
At the UN Special Session on HIV/AIDS last year, governments unanimously adopted a Declaration of Commitment in which they pledged to meet specific targets to reverse the epidemic. The earliest of those targets are set for 2003 and Dr Piot reminded his audience that the next International AIDS Conference - in Bangkok in 2004 - would reveal whether governments had delivered on their promises.
Dr Piot painted a painful picture of the challenges that lie ahead, asking why, 20 years into the epidemic, the world has failed to stop the dramatic expansion of HIV.
"The answers are political. They are about power and priorities," he said. "Ten billion dollars annually is all it will take for a credible minimum response to the epidemic. Yet that sum is three times more than is available today." He said treatment was now technically feasible everywhere in the world, and warned against viewing HIV prevention and care as competing priorities.
Dr Piot also warned that failing to act immediately would have catastrophic consequences. "We stood by while AIDS overwhelmed sub-Saharan Africa. Never again. We cannot stand by as passive observers while other continents repeat history, and we must not fail Africa now, in her attempts to turn back the epidemic's devastation."
Dr Piot said the forces of global inequality underpinning the AIDS epidemic must also be addressed to make real progress against the epidemic.
"International trade negotiations may have as great an impact on how many people get AIDS treatment as any number of national treatment access plans," he said.
Dr Piot called for debt relief for Africa and the world's lowest income countries. He added that middle-income countries with high HIV burdens must also be able to benefit from the most favourable conditions for assistance in aid and loans.
Dr Piot concluded by presenting a clear road map of what is required to keep the promises that have been made on AIDS. "To keep the promise, we must ignite leadership. We must make an uncompromising attack on stigma - that is not negotiable. We must strengthen the alliance that will deliver an HIV vaccine - that is not negotiable. We must deliver both prevention and treatment at full scale - that is not negotiable. We must find US$10 billion - that is not negotiable."
The International AIDS Conference in Barcelona comes days after the release by UNAIDS of staggering new figures which reveal the AIDS epidemic is still in its early phase and shows no sign of levelling off in the hardest hit countries. The Report on the global HIV/AIDS epidemic 2002 warns that AIDS is erasing decades of development and cutting life expectancy by nearly half in the most affected areas.
Today, 40 million people live with HIV/AIDS in the world, 28.5 million of them in sub-Saharan Africa; three million are children under 15. Last year, five million people were newly infected with HIV, and three million died of AIDS.
For more information, please contact Anne Winter, UNAIDS, Barcelona, (+41 79) 213 4312, Dominique de Santis, UNAIDS, Geneva, (+41 22) 791 4509 or Mark Aurigemma, UNAIDS, Barcelona, (+ 34) 609 319 567. You may also visit the UNAIDS Website for more information about the programme (http://www.unaids.org).
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