Is U.S. AIDS Policy Undermining the Global Fight Against the Disease?

The United Nations General Assembly Special Session on AIDS opened Wednesday in New York City. The meeting is one of the biggest since the UN set out goals for tackling the virus in 2001. In total 180 governments will be represented at the three-day conference which is due to end with a new declaration setting out changes in strategy for the global drive against AIDS over the next nine years.

At the opening of the session, UN General Secretary Kofi Annan said the vast majority of countries had fallen "distressingly" short of meeting their targets and criticized the lack of progress in combating HIV.

* Kofi Annan, UN General Secretary, speaking May 31, 2006.

Next week marks the 25th anniversary of the first documented case of AIDS. On Tuesday, UNAIDS officials announced that the total number of HIV cases worldwide has topped 38 million but that the epidemic has begun to slow. India now has the largest number of people infected with HIV, but the worst hit region remains sub-Saharan Africa. Last year 4.1 million people became infected with HIV. An estimated 2.8 million people infected with HIV died last year.

Protesters gathered outside the UN building in New York yesterday to demand that the leaders of rich countries and the most affected countries listen to people most directly affected by HIV and fulfill their commitments to fighting AIDS. The protesters chained themselves in the lobby of the US mission around a large poster that featured a blowup of a letter addressed to Ambassador John Bolton. Police used bolt cutters to separate them and made at least 21 arrests.

The AIDS activists have accused the Bush administration of watering down a declaration to be debated at the conference by removing treatment targets and references to prevention measures - such as condoms and sterile injecting equipment - in favor of abstinence.

Criticism also came from an unlikely source - President Bush's former AIDS policy director. Scott Everts was Bush's lead negotiator at the global conference on AIDS five years ago. He told Reuters that the Bush administration has reached out to militant Islamic governments, including some it classifies as terrorist states, to try to ensure the 2006 declaration backs abstinence and fidelity as crucial tools against AIDS.

* David Bryden, Communication Director for the Global AIDS Alliance.

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