WASHINGTON, Dec 3 (AFP) - US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Tuesday challenged foreign diplomats to take a greater role in tackling the global HIV/AIDS crisis.
Powell, speaking to the Washington diplomatic corps at the State Department, cited Brazil, Cambodia and Uganda as countries where the political elite's "enlightened leadership" has helped reduce the impact of the deadly disease.
"We need enlightened leadership everywhere in the world to take on this task," he said, urging the envoys to send the message back to their capitals that HIV/AIDS must be dealt with publicly and that those infected must not be stigmatized.
"One of the most effective ways to do that is by encouraging political leaders and opinion makers at levels of our societies to speak out: it is critically important that accurate, life-saving information reaches all of the people in our countries," Powell said.
"Consigning the disease to silence means condemning more and more of our citizens to their deaths," he said.
"All of us have a responsibility to send the message that the virus is the enemy, not the men, not the women, not the children who contract it."
Powell said Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's personal attention to AIDS prevention and treatment had been a main factor in a 50-percent drop in the HIV infection rate since 1992.
In Cambodia, which has the highest number of HIV-positive adults in Asia, Powell said government partnerships with health organizations had been responsible for reducing high-risk behaviors and stabilized the infection rate.
And in Brazil, he credited the government's "enlightened policies" for the fact that the number of HIV-positive people is now half of the 1.2 million the World Health Organization had predicted it would be in the 1980s.
Powell's remarks, in which he noted that the United States was the largest contributor to the UN's Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, came during a program to mark World AIDS Day which was observed on December 1.
According to figures released last week by the United Nations, five million people this year will have become infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and some 3.1 million will have died from AIDS.
An estimated 42 million people worldwide suffer from AIDS or are HIV-infected.
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