NO COUNTRY OR SOCIETY SAFE FROM EXPANDING AIDS EPIDEMIC SAYS GENERAL ASSEMBLY PRESIDENT ON WORLD AIDS DAY
Press Release
GA/SM/18
OBV/25
NO COUNTRY OR SOCIETY SAFE FROM EXPANDING AIDS EPIDEMIC SAYS GENERAL ASSEMBLY PRESIDENT ON WORLD AIDS DAY
19971201 Following is the statement of the President of the General Assembly, Hennadiy Udovenko (Ukraine), on the occasion of World AIDS Day, observed on 1 December:Today is the tenth observance of World AIDS Day, which was first declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 1 December 1988. This is, thus, a proper time to ask ourselves: What changes have taken place in the course of these years?
Since the epidemic began, in the late 1970s, well over 30 million people have become infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) or developed acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Approximately one quarter of them have died so far, with an estimated 2.3 million of deaths attributed to AIDS this year alone. About half of all adults infected by this disease are women and that proportion continues to grow. What is also alarming is that more than one half of all those infected are young people under the age of 25 years. The grim statistics, unfortunately, continue to grow at a frightening rate, with 7,500 to 8,500 new infections each day.
HIV and AIDS are spreading with particularly alarming speed through areas with poor social and economic conditions. Nowadays, 90 per cent of all people living with HIV are in developing countries. The disease has started conquering new territories, as well. In central and eastern Europe, which had been closed to the disease for a long time, HIV and AIDS have started to spread at a menacing rate.
The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), in partnership with Member States, is working hard to provide policy development, research, technical support and advocacy, as well as promote greater coordination and cooperation in the field and find and mobilize new resources. Its efforts are crucial for raising awareness of HIV and AIDS amongst the general public, carrying preventive messages into communities and improving care for those infected by HIV.
The problem is global. No country or society is safe from this new challenge to basic human security. To counter this twenty-first century
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plague, we must act as a united community. To match the expanding epidemic, we need expanded financial resources, as well as the political will to do more about the underlying social and economic conditions that leave the majority of people few real options for protection and treatment. It should be obvious for all that AIDS is not purely a medical or moral issue, but part of a larger problem of social and economic underdevelopment and should be addressed as such.
World AIDS Day provides the international community with a unique opportunity to reassure those already affected of our support and to say no to discrimination and denial. It is also a good occasion to reiterate our strong will and dedication to vigorously combat this deadly epidemic.
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