UN urges EU to take decisive action in fight against AIDS
Leading UN agencies, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the World Bank called on European Ministers to take decisive action to prevent the further spread of AIDS across Europe as a matter of urgency at the conference 'breaking the barriers: the fight against HIV/AIDS in Europe and Central Asia' in Dublin, Ireland, on 23 February. 'Europe and Central Asia are at the centre of the fastest-growing HIV epidemic in the world. There is no time to waste - European ministers must urgently scale up and roll out effective HIV prevention and treatment programmes,' said Dr Peter Piot, UNAIDS Executive Director. 'Given that the EU will form the biggest trading bloc in the world, covering more than 500 million people, it is in the EU's best interest to prevent the AIDS epidemic from crippling Europe's social and economic development.' Attending the conference was European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection David Byrne, who explained that 'The European Union has invested heavily in research into HIV/AIDS and will continue to do so. Currently the EU has allocated 400 million euro to research and development for the period 2003 to 2006. Half of these funds will be allocated to the new European and Developing Countries' Clinical Trials Partnership.' On a wider scale, 'as a leading global donor, the EU will provide 1.2 billion euro from 2003 to 2006 to the global response to HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis through a variety of mechanisms,' said Mr Byrne. 'This represents a four-fold increase of EU funding. The EU has also taken a lead on making essential medicines more affordable by supporting the WHO's [World Health Organisation] '3 by 5' initiative.' Also speaking at the conference was Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Brian Cowen, T.D who insisted that the fight against HIV/AIDS was beyond the capacity of one government and called the EU and the US to join forces in the search for and AIDS vaccine, and to assume global leadership in the fight against the disease. Mr Cowen also insisted that the Dublin Declaration on Partnership to fight HIV/AIDS in Europe and Central Asia should be followed with concrete action, not only at EU level, but also among the EU's neighbours to the east. 'Effective HIV/AIDS prevention and care programs will require that funding from all sources increase to about US$1.5 billion [1.18 billion euro] by 2007. But money alone is not the issue. It is crucial to improve the information base for programmes, to support what works against HIV/AIDS, and to break down the policy and social barriers to effective actions across the region,' said Shigeo Katsu, World Bank Regional Vice President for Europe and Central Asia. Over 1.5 million people are living with HIV in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, a significant increase from the 1995 figure of 30,000. In Western Europe, many governments have not focused as much on prevention as they did in the 1990s, and infection rates are once again on the increase. In 2003 alone, between 30, 000 and 40,000 people became infected with HIV, raising the number of people living with HIV to between 520,000 and 680,000.
Countries
Ireland