Top researchers, policymakers and activists head to Bangkok this week to assess the global AIDS pandemic as the killer disease is poised to ravage Eastern Europe and Asia's most populous countries.
Up to 20,000 people are registered for the conference starting on Sunday, making it the biggest potential turnout for any meeting in the 23-year history of AIDS and the first time this key event will be held in a developing country in Asia.
Ahead of the conference, the UN agency UNAIDS will tomorrow issue its first detailed update on the world epidemic in two years, giving the latest estimated toll of deaths and new infections and country-by-country figures.
PHOTO: AFP
Since it first came to light in 1981, acquired immune deficiency syndrome has left no cranny of the world unscathed.
According to previous estimates, the disease had claimed some 25 million to 26 million lives as of last year, and around 40 million people were living with the disease or the virus that causes it. Around 14,000 more people each day become infected.
There is no cure for HIV, only antiretroviral drugs which keep the virus at bay and which are only just now starting to trickle into poor countries that need them most. And any vaccine to prevent infection seems to lie years away.
Ironically, says UNAIDS Executive Director Peter Piot, the picture is brighter today than it has been in years.
"The landscape of AIDS has changed quite dramatically," he said in a phone interview. "In developing countries, our work has changed, especially in Africa."
The main improvement, he said, is that money is at last starting to flow in big volumes, with funds reaching more than US$5 billion this year alone.
This is still not enough to meet needs, but -- combined with big price cuts for drugs -- it has given a kickstart to the UN's goal of providing three million poor people with antiretroviral therapy by the end of next year.
China, India and Indonesia -- Asia's Big Three, accounting for more than a third of humanity -- are ripe targets for AIDS, as are the former Soviet-bloc countries, experts say.
Each nation is different, but a common thread binds them. The bitter experience of the US, Europe and Africa shows how ignorance, stigma, official indifference and poor resources become a lethal combination, enabling the virus to leap out of small, localized demographic pools and into the population mainstream.
"The handshake of [Chinese] Premier Wen Jiabao (
But, he said, the level of political awareness was not the same in Eastern Europe, facing the fastest-growing HIV spread of any region in the world.
As for India and its neighbors, "the leaders are in a state of denial and there is a very high level of discomfort to even talk about it," Praful Patel, the World Bank's regional vice president, complained last Wednesday. "[They thought] HIV-AIDS is an African problem and it cannot happen in South Asia."
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened to take action against the EU if it moves forward with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s proposal to make Canada the bloc’s first associate member. “If they do that, if I think it’s at all a hostile act; I will put very serious tariffs or stop trading with Europe on many things,” Trump told reporters en route to an event in North Carolina, calling the proposal “laughable.” “If it’s a good intention, that’s fine. If it’s a bad intention, we’ll put very heavy tariffs on Europe,” he said. Von der Leyen made the proposal
FROSTY RECEPTION: ‘I conveyed the strong view of the Irish people that the normalization of war and genocide can never be accepted,’ the Irish president said US President Donald Trump on Saturday said that he would “love to see” a united Ireland, wading into a politically sensitive subject as he embarked on a two-day Irish visit that blurs the lines between his presidency and personal business interests. After meeting Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin in Dublin, Trump said reunification of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland — split for more than a century — would be “a fantastic thing.” “It’s going to happen eventually. It may as well happen now,” he told reporters, adding that “the UK will have something to say about it, obviously.”
French President Emmanuel Macron today embarks on a rare and symbolic visit to a remote French territory in the North Atlantic, hosting Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at a time of growing tensions with Washington. The three-day visit to Saint Pierre and Miquelon, a three-island archipelago of less than 6,000 people just 25km off Newfoundland, would be the first by a French president in more than a decade. The trip to France’s only remaining possession in North America, a vestige of the huge territories Paris once controlled in what is now Canada and the US, carries immense symbolic resonance. Macron insists that US
SEEKING AN AGREEMENT: The Cambodian foreign minister said Phnom Penh aimed to build trust through the mediation process, not further escalate tensions Thailand yesterday said that Cambodia was playing the victim in a dispute over maritime resources, as the Southeast Asian neighbors took their feud to international mediators a year after deadly clashes over their land border. Cambodia, which initiated the case before the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in Singapore, said it hoped the hearings would yield a peaceful resolution for both countries. In May, Thailand unilaterally pulled out of a bilateral framework agreement that aimed to resolve overlapping maritime border claims, but denied any link to their land dispute. Cambodia subsequently initiated a UN-backed conciliation process at the PCA, saying it hoped to
RSS