USIS Washington File - May 31, 2006
Judy Aita, Washington File United Nations Correspondent

The symbolic, but important speech was the first address ever given to the General Assembly by a HIV-infected person. The young woman showed policy makers the face of HIV/AIDS and explained why the conference -- 25 years after HIV was first discovered and five years after the assembly's historic special session -- is critical in the fight against the disease.

U.S. first lady Laura Bush is attending the meetings along with a large U.S. delegation. Heads of state, cabinet ministers, and more than 1,000 representatives of civil society and the private sector will participate in a variety of meetings during the session May 31 to June 2.

UNAIDS Executive Director Peter Piot said that more progress has been made in the last five years than in the previous 20 years, but the crisis continues.

"Goals that seemed impossible to achieve just five years ago have been realized," Dr. Piot said. In more and more countries on every continent, AIDS epidemics are declining, proving concretely that "AIDS is a problem with a solution. Thus, today, the foundations exist for the world to mount a response commensurate with the challenge of stopping and reversing the pandemic."

For the session to succeed the General Assembly must get clear financial commitments and set targets for long-term universal access to prevention, treatment and care, he said.

AIDS AND WOMEN

From the province of Limpopo, South Africa, Khensani Mavasa brought her story and that of others who are living each day with AIDS to U.N. headquarters. In Sub-Saharan Africa, she said, thousands are on treatment, but millions are dying.

"Because of scientific advances of the past 25 years, I have hope that when the time comes for me to take treatment, it would be available," Mavasa said. "The entire world's HIV-positive people deserve this hope. All the 14,000 more who will be infected by the end of today deserve this hope. None of the 900 people who will die in my country deserve to die today."

The 28-year-old survivor of rape and other forms of abuse said that she still lives "under the power of men and the institutions they run to perpetuate the oppression of women." Violence against women, Mavasa said, is directly related to the spread of HIV.

"I call on African leaders sitting here to protect and promote the human rights of all people in vulnerable groups, particularly women and girls," Mavasa said. "We ask that you not fail us yet again."

At about 17.3 million, women make up almost half of the total number of people living with the virus, according to the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, known as UNAIDS. In sub-Saharan Africa, 13.2 million women are infected, accounting for 76 percent of all women living with HIV. In Africa, 77 percent of new infections are women.

A major element of the meetings, General Assembly President Jan Eliasson said, must be the "feminization of the epidemic" and the decisions that are necessary to have a tangible impact on young women's lives.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan added that the world has been "unconscionably slow" in meeting one of the most vital aspects of the struggle: fighting the spread of HIV/AIDS among women and girls.

Since 1981, about 65 million people have been infected with HIV. AIDS has killed more than 25 million people, according to UNAIDS. An estimated 38.6 million people worldwide were living with HIV at the end of 2005. An estimated 4.1 million became newly infected and 2.8 million died.

Overall, the HIV incidence rate is believed to have peaked in the late 1990s and to have stabilized, notwithstanding increasing incidence in several countries. However, the numbers of people living with HIV has continued to rise due to population growth and the life-prolonging effects of anti-retroviral therapy, said the UNAIDS report entitled 2006 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic: A UNAIDS 10th Anniversary Special Edition.

The report, released May 30, is a five-year assessment of progress in AIDS using indicators developed by UNAIDS, individual nations and a range of partners. It arose from the 2001 Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS, adopted at a special session of the U.N. General Assembly. The report shows that progress has been made in country AIDS responses, including increases in funding and access to treatment, and decreases in HIV prevalence among young people in some countries over the past five years. (Related article)

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