UN AIDS summit overcomes condom resistance (AFP)

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) – A new condom home delivery service in India and the production of billions of extra contraceptives around the world highlight the breakthrough of condoms in helping put a brake on the AIDS pandemic, experts say.

An AIDS summit on Friday gave the most explicit UN backing yet to the use of condoms. Negotiators said they had to overcome fierce opposition from the Vatican and conservative Muslim countries to get the final communique to even mention the latex contraceptive.

Instead of talking simply about the importance of abstinence and fidelity, the statement stresses the "correct and consistent use of condoms." The Vatican led protests at the summit final session.

"It is a first at the UN General Assembly," said a diplomat who took part in two months of hard-fought negotiations on the text.

"We are very happy about this. It is very explicit and will definitely help our work to overcome resistance and fears about condoms," said George Tembo, head of the AIDS/HIV department at the UN Population Fund.

The global need for condoms to combat HIV and for family planning has shot up from an estimated 13 billion in 2004 to about 19 billion in 2010, according to the UN Population Fund.

Tembo said the UN agency gave out about 3.2 billion condoms in target countries in 2010, up from 2.7 billion the year before.

India's Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad told the summit about the "door-to-door distribution" of male and female condoms by thousands of social health activists in his country.

The condoms will initially be delivered to homes in 17 Indian provinces covering an approximate population of 200 million people "and will be scaled up to cover the entire country soon," the minister said.

India also has the Red Ribbon Express train crossing the country giving out condoms and advice on preventing AIDS.

A similar effort is gathering pace in many countries, especially in Africa which has borne the brunt of the AIDS pandemic that has killed 30 million people since it first appeared 30 years ago.

In Kenya, condom demand has risen from eight million per month in 2005 to 20 million per month in 2011, said Esther Murugi Mathenge, the country's minister of state for special programmes.

Cameroon gave out 145 million condoms between 2006 and 2010, said its Health Minister Andre Mama Fouda. "Major efforts have been made to make condoms available. The number of female condoms has increased sixfold between 2006 and 2010."

It helps, he said, but Cameroon, with a population of about 19.5 million still has about 560,000 people aged between 15 and 49 carrying the virus.

There were 33,000 AIDS-related deaths in 2010 and 50,000 new infections said Fouda. "We now have 305,000 children made orphans because of HIV and AIDS."

Tembo at the UNFPA said governments and activists are slowly overcoming religious and social resistance to the use of condoms.

"It is not just distributing them, you have to make sure people know about them and know how to use them," he said. "Otherwise they are just left to melt in the sun."

So the UN Population Fund encourages social workers to get out to markets, pop festivals and sporting events such as last year's football World Cup in South Africa, to show people how to use prophylactics.

The increased use and other efforts by governments and doctors have been generally hailed at the summit, which has set a target of getting drugs to all AIDS sufferers by 2015. Is it enough?

"We must face the fact that all these efforts have yet to turn the tide of this epidemic. Three decades on, the rates of new infection still outpace treatment intervention, thereby compelling us to do more," South Africa's Vice President Kgalema Motlanthe told a UN Security Council debate on the pandemic.

UN summit adopts AIDS targets amid condom storm (AFP)

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) – A UN summit ordered a huge expansion in AIDS treatment, but sparked protests by the Vatican and some Muslim nations over its endorsement of condoms and calls to help prostitutes, gays and drug users.

The three day summit for the 30th anniversary of the discovery of AIDS set the target of more than doubling the number of people on retroviral treatment to 15 million by 2015. It said mother-to-child AIDS transmissions should also be eliminated by then.

"We must win our battle against AIDS and we will," said Joseph Deiss, president of the UN General Assembly, after the declaration was agreed by consensus by UN members.

About 34 million people around the world have the disease, 1.8 million die from it each year and there are 7,000 new infections each day.

But UN countries committed "to accelerate efforts to achieve the goal of universal access" to retroviral treatment.

They aim to place 15 million HIV sufferers in the poorest countries on life-extending drugs by 2015. About 6.6 million people currently receive treatment, according to UN figures.

The accord also aims to end mother-to-child HIV infection by 2015 and increase preventative measures for the "most vulnerable populations."

Health groups welcomed the declaration, but said the international community must now commit the necessary funds to pay for the targets.

The summit did not make financial commitments. The United Nations estimates the international community will have to find six billion dollars a year to get the extra nine million sufferers onto retroviral treatment.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the setting of "clear and measurable targets," a spokesman said. He called this "an absolute imperative if we are to succeed in realizing our vision of zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths."

Britain's International Development Minister Stephen O'Brien said the reluctance to commit to firm figures did not mean the targets would not be met.

"Yes it is stretching, yes it is tough and yes it is going to be difficult, it will be a rocky road, but it's worth going for and we are not going to dilute the ambition," he said.

The final document makes the most explicit reference yet by a UN summit document to the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS and also calls for greater help prostitutes, gays and drug users.

There was fierce debate about the wording in weeks of negotiations on the final document, with strong opposition from the Vatican and Muslim nations such as Iran, diplomats involved with the talks said.

Instead of talking simply about the importance of abstinence and fidelity, the statement stresses the "correct and consistent use of condoms."

"It is important to point out the reference to key populations in this declaration such as men that have sex with men, sex workers, injecting drug users," said the Brazilian Health Minister Alexandre Padilha.

Padilha said the rights of transgenders, transvestites and prisoners also had to be defended.

The Vatican's delegate was jeered by activists in the General Assembly, when she opposed the mention of condoms and the "high risk" population sectors.

"They can give the impression that certain types of irresponsible behavior are morally acceptable. The Holy See does not endorse the use of condoms as part of HIV and AIDS prevention programs," said the delegate Jane Adolthe.

Iran's acting health minister, Mohammad Hossein Niknam, said his country would not be bound by summit references to "monoethical behaviors" which run counter to Islamic culture, the minister said.

Syria also complained about the support for vulnerable groups saying it should be left to individual countries to decide who to protect.

UN aids experts said the summit declaration would help them to overcome religious and social resistance to condoms which have been shown as one of the most effecive ways of stopping the spread of AIDS.

U.N. summit sets plan to stop HIV child infections (Reuters)

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – World leaders at a U.N. AIDS summit launched a plan on Thursday to try to eliminate by 2015 most new HIV infections among children, who inherit the condition from already infected mothers.

The campaign was launched as the leaders also agreed on a target of reaching 15 million people with HIV treatment, more than double the number who currently get it, also by 2015.

Both goals were announced just weeks after groundbreaking new data showed that early treatment of the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, which causes AIDS, can cut its transmission to a sexual partner by 96 percent.

In 2009, some 370,000 children were born with HIV, or one nearly every minute -- the vast majority of them in 22 countries, almost all in Africa. But providing HIV-positive pregnant women with treatment can reduce the risk of a child being born with the virus to less than 5 percent.

The UNAIDS organization and the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which are jointly managing the campaign launched on Thursday, said it would aim to reduce the number of child infections by 90 percent by 2015.

"We believe that by 2015 children everywhere can be born free of HIV and that their mothers can remain healthy," UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibe told the launch event, describing the plan as realistic and achievable.

UNAIDS Deputy Executive Director Paul De Lay told Reuters the plan was based on providing pregnant women with more information and on more effective use of anti-AIDS drugs.

"BEGINNING OF THE END"

UNAIDS officials said funding from all sources for prevention of mother-child transmission of HIV was currently running at some $500 million a year. They said a total of $2.5 billion more would be needed by 2015 to achieve the campaign's target of eliminating mother-to-child HIV infections.

"Developed countries already do this," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the meeting. "But we cannot rest until this is true for our whole world."

U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Eric Goosby said the United States was contributing an extra $75 million to the campaign. Several private companies and foundations also announced contributions.

Achieving the goal could be "the beginning of the end of the story, because that opens the prospect for an AIDS-free generation," Michel Kazatchkine, head of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, told Reuters.

Meanwhile, a declaration agreed by the 140-nation U.N. summit commits governments to "the target of working toward 15 million people living with HIV on antiretroviral treatment by 2015."

The declaration is expected to be adopted on Friday at the end of the three-day summit, which was held close to the 30th anniversary of the discovery of AIDS.

Some 6.6 million were receiving antiretroviral treatment in low- and middle-income countries at the end of 2010, according to U.N. figures.

Aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) called the pledge a "critical step," but said governments needed to take "immediate concrete action" to make the target a reality.

"There are 9 million people waiting for HIV treatment today," Tido von Schoen-Angerer of MSF said in a statement. "This whole AIDS summit will have been a farce if we don't see real plans to ramp up treatment so we can get ahead of the wave of new infections."

(Editing by Vicki Allen)