Inter Press Service - October 6, 2000
Thalif Deen

The three-day Special Session, scheduled to take place in New York in May next year, will be the first major UN conference on AIDS.

A resolution adopted by the General Assembly notes with "deep concern" the accelerating spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which has already infected millions of people worldwide, and the resulting increase in cases of AIDS.

The Assembly also says that it is alarmed, that despite all efforts, the HIV/AIDS epidemic "is having a more severe impact than was originally projected," and that resources devoted to combating the epidemic are not commensurate with the magnitude of the problem.

The Special Session is expected to call for increased funding to fight the disease which has severely affected developing nations, particularly in Africa. UNAIDS, the UN agency jointly co-ordinating the fight against the fast spreading disease, has said that Africa alone needs a minimum of over 3 billion dollars per year to combat AIDS.

In his annual report submitted to the General Assembly last month, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has declared that the HIV/AIDS epidemic has become a serious development crisis.

"The pandemic is destroying the economic and social fabric in the countries most affected, reversing years of declining death rates and causing dramatic rises in mortality among young adults," Annan warns.

According to UN figures, a total of 18.8 million people have died of AIDS since the beginning of the epidemic. By the end of 1999, at least 34.3 million adults and children around the world were living with HIV/AIDS. In 1999 alone, there were 5.4 million new infections, while the number of children orphaned by AIDS have reached 13.2 million.

Africa south of the Sahara is the most affected region, with a total of 24.5 million people living with HIV/AIDS. In that region, AIDS is now the leading cause of mortality.

In his report, Annan says that HIV prevalence rates among those aged 15 to 49 have already reached or exceeded 10 percent in 16 countries, all in sub-Saharan Africa.

There is also serious concern over the rapid increase in HIV infections in Europe and in South and East Asia. In the Caribbean, several island states have worse epidemics than any other countries outside sub-Saharan Africa, Annan points out.

The Secretary-General says that in the last year, the United Nations has made significant efforts to help countries address these daunting challenges.

In an unprecedented move, the UN Security Council, at a meeting last January, addressed the impact of the epidemic on Africa. The meeting resulted in the creation of an Inter-Agency Standing Committee Working Group to examine the relationship between war and civil strife and the spread of HIV/AIDS.

"Major challenges in the fight against AIDS remain," Annan says, "There is a critical need for additional financial resources and development assistance." At the recently-concluded UN Millennium Summit, over 150 world leaders pledged to stop and reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015.

Addressing the summit in early September, President Festus Mogae of Botswana said: "I stand before you to claim the dubious distinction of being leader of a country most seriously affected by HIV/AIDS in the whole world."

Confining his entire speech to "the scourge of HIV/AIDS" in Southern Africa, Mogae said that all of the economic gains made in the last 25 years are now being eroded by the spread of the deadly disease.

"Now we daily witness elderly mothers mourning the untimely deaths of their beloved children, babies born today only to be buried the next day, and a growing population of orphans yearning for parental love and care," he said. "These are the traumatising realities of HIV/AIDS with which we live and have to contend," he added.

He said that it was frightening to note that, half of the people who become infected with HIV/AIDS are those under the age of 25.

The HIV/AIDS pandemic is a global problem which calls for global action, he argued. The pandemic threatens human development and social and economic security.

"There is, therefore, an urgent need for concerted action on the part of the international community as a whole to fight this scourge," he noted.

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