IN WORLD AIDS DAY MESSAGE, SECRETARY-GENERAL SAYS EMERGENCY PERSISTS IN MANY REGIONS, DESPITE MEDICAL ADVANCES

17 November 1998

Press Release
SG/SM/6798
OBV/73

IN WORLD AIDS DAY MESSAGE, SECRETARY-GENERAL SAYS EMERGENCY PERSISTS IN MANY REGIONS, DESPITE MEDICAL ADVANCES

19981117 High Cost of Treatment Noted, with 95 Per Cent of Infections In Poorer Countries; Tribute Paid to UN Pioneers Who Died in Plane Crash

This is the text of a message from Secretary-General Kofi Annan to mark the observance of World AIDS Day on 1 December:

Today we mark World AIDS Day in memory of those who have died, and in recognition of those who live and work on the front lines of the struggle against the epidemic.

Among them, we pay tribute to Jonathan Mann, the founder of the United Nations AIDS programme, and his wife Mary-Lou, the pioneering AIDS researcher, who died along with several United Nations colleagues in a plane crash less than three months ago.

Some would have us believe that because better medicines have been found, the AIDS emergency is over. The facts tell us otherwise. There is still no cure. The advance of HIV has not been stopped in any country. Even in Western Europe and North America, around 75,000 people were infected last year.

By the end of this month, the number of adults and children living with HIV will exceed 33 million -- 10 per cent more than a year ago. AIDS has already taken 14 million lives. At least 95 per cent of all infections and deaths occur in the developing world, where the costly new medicines that can help prolong lives are scarcely available or affordable.

So the truth is that AIDS is still an emerging epidemic -- one that is killing more people every year than malaria. Because the victims are mostly young adults, who would otherwise be raising families and supporting the economy, the repercussions are reaching crisis level. Nowhere is this truer than in sub-Saharan Africa, where 34 million people have been infected and 11.5 million have died since the epidemic began.

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This tidal wave risks wiping out the hard-won gains of poorer nations. In Botswana, a child born early in the next decade can expect to live just past 40 -- instead of to age 70 in the absence of AIDS. Zimbabwe estimates that by the year 2005, it will have more than 900,000 AIDS orphans under 15. A major company in Tanzania says its costs due to AIDS exceeded its total profits for the year.

That is why the broad-based struggle against the epidemic carried out by the UNAIDS inter-agency programme is vital. Perhaps the most important message the United Nations system can convey is that we are not powerless against the epidemic. Many countries, including a handful in the developing world, have slowed the spread of HIV by talking openly about AIDS and sexual behaviour; by showing solidarity with those already infected; and by making information about prevention and support available to all citizens.

Experience tells us that prevention efforts are especially likely to pay off among young people, by teaching them to adopt safe behaviour from the start. Around half of all HIV infections occur in young people aged 15-24. Through the 1998 "Force for Change" campaign, the United Nations and its partners have highlighted the role that young people can play in changing the course of the epidemic.

Young people are a powerful influence for education and understanding in their families, their peer groups, their schools, their communities and their countries. On this World AIDS Day, let us recommit to our investment in young people everywhere -- for they hold the key to a safer future.

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