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New York (dpa) - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned Thursday that the spread of HIV/AIDS is speeding up and said governments' response to the epidemic had been insufficient.
In an update on U.N. action against AIDS, Annan painted a gloomy picture, particularly on the plight of the growing number of women and girls infected with HIV.
"Last year saw more new infections and more AIDS-related deaths than ever before. Indeed, HIV and AIDS expanded at an accelerating rate and on every continent," Annan told the General Assembly.
Annan's report said there were 4.9 million new infections and 3.1 million AIDS deaths last year.
The head of the UN-AIDS programme, Peter Piot, told the assembly that there had been a "quantum worsening" in the epidemic's trajectory in past few years.
Taking stock of the last four years, the U.N. chief said there had been progress - though not enough.
"Four years on, the response in every key category has been significant - in political leadership, in funding, in the intensity and reach of prevention programmes, and in the availability of drug therapies," Annan told a one-day session of the U.N. General Assembly to assess the global anti-AIDS campaign.
"But it has also been insufficient," Annan said.
About 40 health ministers attended the session. They were discussing the management of issues of funding, human rights, treatment and care, gender and HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis and malaria.
Results of the discussion will be made into a final report to be presented to the General Assembly's annual session in September, at which world leaders will review the anti-AIDS effort.
Annan's report said women and girls now make up nearly half the world's total of 39.4 million people living with the AIDS virus, and the epidemic is having a staggering impact on children.
Women and girls are increasingly at risk of HIV infection despite being less likely to engage in high-risk behaviour than their male partners, the report said.
"This increasing feminization of the epidemic reflects the paradoxical situation facing women and girls," it said.
An estimated 2.3 children under age 15 are infected with HIV, the majority of them infants who contracted the virus during gestation or delivery, or as a result of breastfeeding.
Africa has the highest number of HIV patients, followed by the Caribbean. South and Southeast Asian regions have 7.1 million HIV patients, including 890,000 new infection in 2004.
There are now nine times more HIV-infected people in Eastern Europe and Central Asia than 10 years ago, the report said. Some 1.7 million are infected in Latin America.
Despite the bleak picture, the U.N. said significant progress has been made to meet the demand for drugs.
Some 700,000 AIDS patients have received anti-retroviral therapies by the end of 2004 under programmes administered by UN-AIDS programmes, the World Health Organization and other programmes by the United States and World Bank.
Yet these patients are only 12 per cent of the 6 million HIV- infected people in low- and middle-income countries.
Richard Feachem, executive director of Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, appealed to governments to sustain funding because those receiving drugs would need them for years to come.
The fund, created in 2000, has been disbursing billions of dollars to purchase drugs and support AIDS education in 130 low- and middle- income countries.
The fund will need 10.4 billion dollars through 2007, Feachem said.
Copyright 2005 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH
