Declaring AIDS had wiped out a decade of progress in some areas, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan yesterday called for funds to combat the killer disease and told governments to stop stigmatizing its victims.
"AIDS can no longer do its deadly work in the dark. The world has started to wake up," Annan told the UN General Assembly on the opening day of its first high-level session on AIDS and HIV, the virus that causes the disease.
The UN chief also put himself into a conference debate, warning nations that all AIDS victims, regardless of their background, should be addressed or the world would not be able to come to grips with the galloping epidemic.
"Let us remember that every person who is infected -- whatever the reason -- is a fellow human being, with human rights and human needs," Annan told 180 delegations, according to his prepared remarks.
Islamic states and others oppose Western and Latin American nations in naming homosexuals, intravenous drug users, prostitutes and prisoners as groups particularly vulnerable to AIDS in a declaration the conference will approve. They say such behavior offends religious and moral sensitivities.
"When we urge others to change their behavior so as to protect themselves against infection, we must be ready to change our own behavior in the public arena," Annan said. "We cannot deal with AIDS by making moral judgments or refusing to face unpleasant facts -- and still less by stigmatizing those who are infected and making out that it is all their fault."
The epidemic has struck some 36 million people, 25 million of them in Africa. The disease, first discovered exactly 20 years ago yesterday, has killed almost 22 million people and left 13 million children without parents.
In some African countries, the virus has set back development by a decade or more, infecting the most productive workers. And now AIDS is spreading with "frightening speed" to eastern Europe, Asia and the Caribbean, Annan said.
Calling the global response not enough to meet the challenge, Annan said spending on AIDS in the developing world needed to rise to roughly five times its present level, now estimated at US$2.3 billion, half of it for treatment in Brazil.
With red AIDS ribbons lighting up the UN headquarters, more than 3,000 activists, businessmen, health experts and HIV victims descended on New York, along with government officials attending the conference. The meeting is to set targets for each nation to follow on prevention and care.
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