DEPUTY SECRETARY-GENERAL SAYS `TIDAL WAVE' OF AIDS THREATENS TO WIPE OUT PROGRESS TOWARDS BETTER LIFE IN POORER NATIONS
Press Release
DSG/SM/36
OBV/81
DEPUTY SECRETARY-GENERAL SAYS `TIDAL WAVE' OF AIDS THREATENS TO WIPE OUT PROGRESS TOWARDS BETTER LIFE IN POORER NATIONS
19981201 World AIDS Day Remarks Stress Role of United Nations Agencies In Broad-based Efforts for Education, Prevention and TreatmentThis is the text of remarks by Deputy Secretary-General Louise Fréchette today, at a panel discussion in New York co-sponsored by the Department of Public Information (DPI) and the American Foundation for AIDS, in observance of World AIDS Day:
Today we mark World AIDS Day in memory of those who have died, and in recognition of those who live and work on the frontlines of the struggle against this terrible epidemic. But today also provides us with an occasion and an imperative to look forward: to recognize youth as a force for change towards a safer future. I am pleased that we are joined by such committed people today. As the global challenge of fighting AIDS is now greater than ever, your presence here is a source of encouragement and promise.
Some people may fondly imagine that because better medicines have been found, the AIDS emergency is over. The facts tell us otherwise. As you may have seen, the Secretary-General's message on this World AIDS Day highlighted some of those facts. There is still no cure. The latest report just issued by UNAIDS tells us that the advance of HIV has not been stopped in any country. 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. Even in the industrialized world, around 75,000 people were infected last year.
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. 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.
Because the victims are mostly young adults, who would otherwise be raising families and supporting the economy, the repercussions are reaching crisis level. Whether measured against the yardstick of deteriorating child survival, reduced life expectancy, overburdened health systems, rising numbers of orphans or bottom-line losses to business, AIDS has never posed a bigger threat to development.
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 children under 15 who have lost their mothers to AIDS. 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, led by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, is vital. Because AIDS has become far more than a health crisis, UNAIDS brings together six co-sponsors from different parts of the United Nations family with mandates ranging from health to development in a cohesive and broad-based partnership against the epidemic. United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank work together and with the UNAIDS Secretariat to ensure countries get the benefit of their joint expertise and support.
The small UNAIDS Secretariat in Geneva works with and on behalf of its co-sponsoring agencies to raise awareness of AIDS as a major development threat, to monitor the global epidemic and track the response to it. It brokers new forms of partnership with Governments and civil society, including the business sector and people living with AIDS. It works to identify and disseminate "best practice" -- the valuable lessons learned over the past decade and a half about how to care for those infected, how to support orphans and other survivors and how to stem the tide of new infections.
UNAIDS also works in partnership with Governments through its six co-sponsors in developing countries and economies in transition to help bolster national responses to the epidemic.
Local country representatives of the co-sponsors plan and carry out prevention and care programmes, drawing on lessons learned elsewhere.
Among the most important of those lessons learned is that prevention efforts are especially likely to pay off among young people. Around half of all HIV infections past infancy now occur in young people aged 15-24. More must be done to give them the information, skills, support and services they
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need for self-protection -- to teach them to adopt safe behaviour from the start.
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.
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. This World AIDS Day is an opportunity for all of us to invest in the force for change that youth provides.
I hope that today's exchange will help us make the best and the most of that potential. On behalf of the United Nations, I thank you all for your commitment to this cause.
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