"AIDS is a threat to humanity" says Nelson Mandela by World AIDS Day 10:37am 30th Nov, 2003   London. December 1, 2003. Associated Press.    The world was losing the battle against AIDS, with governments failing to confront the threat, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said yesterday.    In an interview for World AIDS Day, Mr Annan told the BBC he was saddened by the "incredible callousness" of a world that allowed millions of AIDS sufferers in developing countries to die from lack of affordable treatment.    "I feel angry, I feel distressed, I feel helpless and I also feel that, to live in a world where we have the means, we have the resources to be able to help all these patients, what is lacking is the political will," he said.    "It does feel like injustice, but it does indicate a certain incredible callousness, that one would not have expected in the 21st century."    Mr Annan said he had made progress on getting pharmaceutical companies to lower prices for antiretroviral drugs, the most effective treatment yet discovered for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.    But he said many governments remained unwilling to speak out against the stigma associated with the disease.    As head of the UN, he said: "I'm really not winning the war. I'm not winning the war because I don't think the leaders of the world are engaged enough."    Despite advances in treatment and education, there were more deaths and infections from HIV/AIDS this year than ever before.    The disease killed more than 3 million people so far this year, according to the UN, and at least 34 million people around the world are living with the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV - more than 26 million of them in Africa.    Mr Annan said that by 2005 the UN would need $US10 billion ($A13.87 billion) a year for its fight against AIDS. Its Global Fund to Fight AIDS has so far been promised only $US3.6 billion.    The world needed to confront both "hard threats" such as terrorism and "soft threats", including poverty and AIDS that were causing "much more havoc" than terrorists were.    "For people in some of the countries we are talking about, AIDS is a real weapon of mass destruction," he said.    Mr Annan said it was inexplicable that in certain parts of the world AIDS was a disease that could be treated, while in others it was a death sentence.    - AP    November 30, 2003. "Pop stars perform at Mandela's AIDS concert" By Reuters.    Bono, The Corrs, Beyonce Knowles and other international stars answered Nelson Mandela's call to help fight the scourge of AIDS today, putting on a musical extravaganza broadcast across the world on the internet.    Mandela, 85, joined 40,000 fans of all races who packed into the Green Point stadium in South Africa's tourist mecca Cape Town under a cloudless sky for the fundraising concert.    "AIDS has ceased to be something to be ashamed of. It's just another medical condition," pop singer Bob Geldof, who organised the hugely successful Live Aid concert in London in the 1980s to help Ethiopian famine victims, told the crowd.    The disease has hit South Africa harder than any other country, with more than 5 million of its 45 million people infected, and is seen corroding an already fragile social fabric as it leaves an army of orphans in its wake.    The concert was part of Mandela's 46664 campaign - named after his prison number when he was jailed during South Africa's apartheid era - to mobilise governments to declare HIV/AIDS a global emergency and to get millions infected with the disease on life-prolonging anti-retrovirals.    The South African Broadcasting Corporation televised the concert live on its Africa channel. A live webcast was put out on the internet on www.46664.com, organisers said.    Mandela, who stepped down as South Africa's first black president in 1999, has become one of the world's leading AIDS campaigners.    AIDS was a threat to humanity, but like apartheid it would be beaten, Mandela told reporters yesterday.    "South Africans fought a noble struggle against the evils of apartheid... today we find ourselves facing an even greater threat. It threatens our future on a scale that could not have been imagined," he said.    The concert will be screened globally by MTV on World AIDS Day on December 1. The music channel has offered a 90-minute concert version to broadcasters rights-free and estimates the event could reach more than 2 billion viewers.    Earlier this month, the South African government approved a national drug treatment program to tackle AIDS, bowing to huge domestic and international pressure to act against the epidemic that is killing an estimated 600 South Africans each day.    President Thabo Mbeki's cabinet had long resisted calls for free drug treatment for infected people, but in August it ordered officials to draw up a national treatment plan.    The question of treatment had threatened to dominate the run-up to next year's general election marking 10 years since the end of apartheid.    Mbeki himself long backed so-called "AIDS dissident" scientists who questioned the link between AIDS and HIV. He has since withdrawn from public discussion over the disease.    The United Nations says more than 3 million people died from AIDS this year.    -Reuters    BEIJING, Nov. 29 (Xinhuanet)    Stigma Key Barrier to HIV/AIDS Prevention in China: UNICEF Official.    -- Stigma and discrimination form the main barrier to China's HIV/AIDS prevention, said a UNICEF health official here Saturday.    Overcoming stigma and discrimination is crucial to China winning the war against AIDS, said Koen Vanormelingen, chief of the Health and Nutrition Section of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Office for China.    In China and in the rest of Asia, social and cultural discrimination prevents people from wanting to know more about AIDS, and makes it especially hard to stop the spread of the disease.    A recent investigation by Horizon Market Research, a leading survey company in China, shows that nearly 19 percent of Chinese people have never heard of AIDS, almost the highest percentage in the world. In some regions of central China's Henan Province, where unsanitary blood sales have caused a serious increase in HIV infection, the local people do not even know the term AIDS, and just call it a "mysterious disease."    In addition, for many people, HIV/AIDS is considered a disgraceful condition. Those infected with HIV are usually considered morally bad, and are therefore despised by others.    Stigma and discrimination are also very dangerous in that they may push the HIV-affected group to criminality and other behavior which destabilizes society, said Vanormelingen.    A local HIV worker in Henan was shocked by the hatred of one boy she met. " I will kill that blood trader when I grow up!" he had said. The boy's father had been infected with HIV years ago when he sold blood.    HIV/AIDS is not only a health issue, but a social one. The removal of the stigma attached to it needs the efforts of the whole of society, especially the government and senior leaders, said Vanormelingen.    Though the Chinese central government is making good progress towards HIV/AIDS prevention and care, some local officials and the public still need to pay more attention to the issue, said Vanormelingen.    In his trips around China, Vanormelingen has met many local officials who still feel the problem is some distance away, when it is actually on their doorsteps. China reportedly now has 840,000 HIV carriers, including 80,000 AIDS patients.    "We still need more attention to be paid to this issue, as well as more commitment from the government in order to win the fight against HIV/AIDS," said Vanormelingen. Enditem.    30th November. ABC News Online: "Asia's HIV threat galvanises governments for World AIDS Day"    An unlikely coalition of pop acts, Buddhist ceremony and a former Japanese porn star are combining to give the strongest indication to date that Asia is finally facing up to the threat of a devastating and widespread AIDS epidemic.    In a region of diverse religious beliefs with particular difficulties confronting intimate realities of sexual behaviour and drug use, even some of the most conservative societies are holding a major series of events to mark World AIDS Day on Monday.    Extra urgency has been added to this year's campaigns and candlelit vigils for the dead because of gloomy predictions from health organisations that HIV infections in Asia and the Pacific are set to rise sharply from current low levels.    Of the estimated 40 million people worldwide with HIV or AIDS, about 7.4 million live in Asia and the Pacific, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said.    Ranging from coy displays of condoms in China to a radio talk show featuring a "buxom sex symbol star" in Japan, Monday's message attempts to tackle sexual issues, including in Asia's pervasive sex industry with its often low level of health awareness among workers.    Some of the most active campaigning will be in Japan where AIDS, like in many other Asian countries, was once considered a "foreign disease".    Ai Iijima, 30, an outspoken former porn star whose book about the country's sex industry has been a bestseller, will speak at a government-sponsored event at a train station in Shinjuku, the bustling entertainment district of Tokyo, where 15,000 condoms will be handed out.    A charity concert, "Act Against AIDS 2003" at a 2,000-seater stadium in Tokyo and 30-second messages at hundreds of cinemas across the country will drive home the safe-sex message.    Tokyo authorities are also holding an exhibition of photos on AIDS victims and condoms will be handed out by charities at public events throughout most of December.    In China, often criticised for inaction by AIDS campaigners, representatives of its new generation of leaders will signal a break from past policies by visiting patients at Beijing's Ditan Hospital early Monday.    Another pop concert, a display of condom posters at Beijing's prestigious Tsinghua University and a students' survey and seminar at Shihezi University in Xinjiang are among a slew of events across the country.    China, identified by the WHO as one of the three Asian nations - along with India and Indonesia - that is most likely to see a leap in infections, has already broken fresh ground by showing a condom in a rare 30-second public information slot on state television pointing out the importance of practising safe sex.    In Hong Kong, a large condom-shaped helium balloon will float above the territory.    In Thailand, a member of the royal family will preside over a money-raising Buddhist merit-making ceremony on Sunday, next to the Grand Palace as part of a policy to rejuvenate its successful campaign to halt the spread of the virus during the 1990s.    Twenty of the country's best-known singers will take part in a live concert on Monday and the day will end with a candlelit ceremony at Thailand's Red Cross headquarters to highlight the role of women in combating the AIDS crisis.    Senior government officials in Cambodia will take part in a formal ceremony after a rally in Phnom Penh.    Church services, charity barbecues and cabarets will be held across Australia, run by the government and non-governmental organisations.    Public awareness events are also to be held in Nepal, the Philippines and Malaysia.    In India, where there are 4.58 million people with HIV/AIDS, second in number only to South Africa, 3,000 students will march through New Delhi on a "Walk for Life" on Sunday.    The Hindu nationalist-led federal government has infuriated activists there by calling for anti-AIDS strategies based on abstinence rather than the use of condoms.    Pakistan, where admission and discussion of illicit sexual relations and advocacy of condom use is taboo, is just as vulnerable.    The Western Pacific regional director of the WHO, Shigeru Omi, said last week that ignorance, denial and intolerance had created an atmosphere that allows HIV/AIDS to spread easily in Asia.    -- AFP    " India grapples with AIDS epidemic as public ignorance lingers" by Channel NewsAsia's India Correspondent Atul Jolly    NEW DELHI : India has declared an all-out war against AIDs, but the task seems like an uphill battle as public ignorance and misconceptions linger in the country.    In fact, the number of cases is rising there and coupled with inadequate health care and widespread prejudice, the epidemic looks set to worsen.    In conjunction with World AIDS Day, the World Health Organisation has called on the public to stop blaming and making moral judgements against those vulnerable to the disease.    India has the second highest rate of HIV infection after South Africa in absolute terms. Out of a total of 40 million people infected in the world, more than 4.5 million are from India. That is 0.8 per cent of the adult population.    In India, 80 per cent of all HIV infections are sexually transmitted. Welfare organisations have advocated abstinence, sexual faithfulness and condom usage. But the last alternative - condom usage - may not necessarily be viable everywhere in India.    According to a study, if a person in a village would have to take more than half an hour to find a pack of condoms, unlike in cities where contraception is readily available.That suggests he would have to either plan ahead or take a very long walk.    Of all the people tested positive for HIV, more than half were sex workers, making them a high-risk group.    "We do address these high-risk groups and we do provide them services like condom promotion, treatment of sexually transmitted diseases and peer counseling," said Meenakshi Datta, Director, National AIDS Control Organisation.    At GB Road, the notorious red light area of New Delhi, the sex workers have easy and free access to condoms, but it is up to the client whether they are used or not. When the man refuses to use a condom, the transaction still goes ahead, though at a higher charge.    The UN believes public ignorance is fuelling the spread of AIDS in India - a land of castes, stigmatisations and misconceptions - all of them the worst enemies of the HIV-positive sufferers.    Two students were in fact expelled from a school in Trivendrum in south India, after parents of other children found out about their HIV-positive status.    Instances of doctors refusing treatment to infected patients are also prevalent.    "People living with HIV/AIDS must be afforded protection and dignity. I hope that such protection will be a prominent part of the National AIDS legislation, currently being devised," said Peter Piot, UNAIDS Executive Director.    This legislation aims to provide legal and social protection to HIV infected people. But with no cure as yet, prevention remains the best weapon against HIV/AIDS. - CNA    Copyright © 2003 MCN International Pte Ltd Visit the related web page
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