PRESS CONFERENCE ON SECRETARY-GENERAL’S REPORT ON GLOBAL AIDS RESPONSE

The global fight against HIV/AIDS was yielding significant and positive results, according to a new report by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, highlighted today at a Headquarters press conference, but leading actors in that fight warned that all was not cause for celebration.

The Secretary-General will present the report (document A/62/780) at the opening session of the General Assembly’s high-level meeting on HIV/AIDS, scheduled to begin tomorrow, 10 June, at Headquarters. 

Briefing correspondents today on the report’s key findings were Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), Peter Piot, and the Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Michel Kazatchkine.

“The report highlights real results,” said Mr. Kazatchkine.  Specifically, the report notes that three million people were receiving antiretroviral (ARV) treatment at the end of 2007, including two million people in Africa.  That was a 15-fold increase from 2001, when fewer than 200,000 people received ARV therapy.  In 2001, more than half of those who received ARV therapy lived in Brazil, the only developing country that offered free ARV treatment to its citizens.

The report also notes that, globally, the rate of new infections had declined and pregnant women living with HIV were increasingly able to access drug therapy to prevent mother-to-child transmission, he said.  By the end of 2007, 33 per cent of pregnant women living with HIV in low- and middle-income countries received ARV drugs.  Additionally, 200,000 children living with HIV in the developing world were receiving treatment, an increase of 80,000 from last year. 

According to Mr. Piot, the mobilization of resources to fight HIV/AIDS had also improved, going beyond targets that had been laid out in the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS, adopted by the General Assembly in 2001.  That Declaration had set a target of $7 billion by 2005.  Last year, global resources mobilized for HIV/AIDS totalled $10 billion. 

Despite the advances and increased resource mobilization, Mr. Piot and Mr. Kazatchkine both tempered their optimism.

“The AIDS epidemic is far from over,” said Mr. Piot.  “There are 7,000 new infections every single day, 6,000 people dying every day.  That’s a crisis by any standard.”

According to the report, the rate of progress in expanding access to essential services was failing to keep pace with the expansion of the epidemic.  For example, while an additional one million people had started ARV therapy in 2007, 2.5 million people had been newly infected during that same period.

An estimated 33.2 million people worldwide were living with HIV as of December 2007 and, although the rate of new infections had fallen globally, the number of people newly infected had increased in a number of countries, including China, Indonesia, Russia and Ukraine, in European Union countries and in North America, the report found.  AIDS was still the leading cause of death in Africa and, overall, there was a growing “feminization” of the epidemic, with the rate of infection among women increasing compared to men.

“Despite the progress,” said Mr. Kazatchkine, “only 30 per cent -- or close to one third -- of the people we believe to be in need of antiretroviral treatment access ARV therapy currently.”

Among the obstacles that prevented the entire population in need from accessing ARV treatment were weak health-care systems, critical shortages in human resources and a lack of predictable long-term funding for HIV/AIDS, explained Mr. Kazatchkine.

He said that programmes supported by the Global Fund provided treatment for more than 50 per cent of all people receiving ARV therapy worldwide.  The Fund also provided two thirds of international financing for efforts to combat malaria and tuberculosis. 

Though some countries, such as the United Kingdom, had pledged money to the Global Fund until the year 2014, such long-term funding was not the norm.  Mr. Kazatchkine said there was a need for more funding over the long haul, including through official development assistance (ODA) and new and innovative private and public funding mechanisms. 

Asked how much money would be needed to treat all persons in need of ARV therapy, Mr. Kazatchkine explained that, last year, there had been a funding gap of roughly $7 billion.  The need in 2007 had been estimated globally at $17 billion, but only $10 billion had been received and spent.

“There will always be a gap,” said Mr. Kazatchkine.  “We are hopeful that these gaps are narrowing, but let’s be very careful because 2008… is a time when some people say ‘You’re doing alright with the AIDS epidemic.  Now we have to focus on something else’.  We need a very sustained effort and we still need increased resources.”

The high-level meeting on HIV/AIDS could address some of those funding issues, said Mr. Piot.  Member States, civil society groups and other stakeholders are expected to review progress towards targets agreed by the Assembly in its 2001 Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS and its 2006 Political Declaration on HIV/AIDS. 

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For information media • not an official record