PRESS CONFERENCE BY UNICEF EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR ON HIV/AIDS AND
Press Briefing
PRESS CONFERENCE BY UNICEF EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR ON HIV/AIDS AND
19990920 POLIO CAMPAIGNCarol Bellamy, the Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), told correspondents at a Headquarters press conference that the "quite extraordinary" spread of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa risks wiping out the gains made in children's health in the last two decades.
Speaking the week after she addressed the eleventh international conference on AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) in Lusaka, Zambia, Ms. Bellamy said 33.5 million people worldwide were now living with AIDS; half of all newly- infected people were in the 10-25 age group; 8,500 children every day were orphaned by the disease -- a rate of six per minute; and in the case of Uganda, for example, 11 per cent of all children in the country were now AIDS orphans.
In her Lusaka speech, Ms. Bellamy had observed that while 200,000 Africans died in armed conflicts during 1998, 2 million had died of AIDS in the same year. The AIDS pandemic was "the world's most terrible undeclared war" and it had turned sub- Saharan Africa into "a killing field".
Ms. Bellamy also briefed correspondents on the progress being made in UNICEF'S campaign against poliomyelitis, saying the world was "on the verge" of being able to eradicate the disease completely, but access to vulnerable populations in conflict zones remained the central problem. While she was in Africa, Ms. Bellamy travelled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to help launch the second round of National Immunization Days. In response to a question, she said the interest and involvement of the United Nations Secretary-General had helped make the first round a success.
However, there were 13 countries where much work remained to be done in the battle against polio; Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo itself and Afghanistan were the most serious cases, because conflict was preventing access to significant sections of the population. In Angola, for example, UNICEF had asked all parties to respect "Days of Tranquillity" to enable UNICEF to reach children who would otherwise be beyond reach.
Asked to elaborate on the problems of access in Angola specifically, Ms. Bellamy said the Government had generally provided access [to the areas under its control] and there had been some success, but the general situation there and in the Democratic Republic of Congo remained "very difficult".
Ms. Bellamy went on to say that UNICEF enjoyed "good partnership" with other organizations involved in the work on polio, and added that some two thirds of the money needed to complete the current effort had been pledged.
Bellamy Briefing - 2 - 20 September 1999
In response to another question about the general effectiveness of the United Nations, Ms. Bellamy said there remained three great challenges for the future: poverty, war and HIV/AIDS, and she said that -- whatever the political problems facing it -- the United Nations had achieved some "very significant successes" in its development work.
* *** *