Independent
On-Line, 02 December 2002, World unites in marking Aids day
Millions of people around the globe marked World Aids Day on Sunday with marches
and prayers amid grim statistics that show the epidemic outpacing all efforts to
control it.
In
"We pay tribute to all the children who have passed away in our care,"
said Jackie Schoeman of the Cotlands Baby Sanctuary, which held a ceremony on
Sunday in
Sunday's World Aids Day activities highlight
how dangerously the disease has spread since it was first detected among
homosexual men in the
Estimates released by the United Nations last week
indicate that more than 40 million people worldwide are infected with HIV, the
virus which causes Aids, the vast majority of them in sub-Saharan
Aids will have killed 3,1 million people by the end
of this year, while five million more will have been infected, UNAids said in
its report.
Worldwide, half of those infected are now women, the
report says, meaning more babies could become infected through their mothers.
"It's time to stop the denial, the partying and
the pretension: Aids kills gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and straight
people," said Doneley Meris, who helps run mental health and social
services for people living with HIV and Aids.
And in
To see what damage Aids can do, one has only to look
at
Food output is falling because of drought and the
fact that agricultural workers are dying.
Millions of children have been orphaned by the
disease. Cemetery space is running out, average life expectancy is falling and
billions of dollars are being chopped from the region's already fragile
economies.
"There is no longer a distinction between those
living with HIV/Aids and those who are not," South African Deputy President
Jacob Zuma said in the government's official World Aids Day speech yesterday.
"We are all living with the disease."
Treatment, limited to expensive cocktails of
antiretroviral drugs, reaches only a tiny handful of Aids sufferers who need it.
At
In a sign that developed countries may be in for
another Aids shock after seeing new cases decline in recent years, British
officials said this week that the country was likely to have a 20 percent
increase in new HIV cases this year - a number twice that reported at the end of
the 1990s.
Officials point to some hopeful signs, including some
successful Aids awareness campaigns in
UNAids calculates that by 2007 the world will have to
find about $15 billion (R139 million) a year to treat Aids in low and middle
income countries - but contributions to the new Global Fund designed to
spearhead anti-Aids work are lagging. - Reuters