The price of success, the cost of failure: Special Session on HIV/AIDS.

PositionStatistical Data Included

It is hard to believe it was only twenty years ago this June that the first clinical evidence for acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) was reported in the medical press. In the two intervening decades, more than 56 million men, women and children-a number nearly equal to the population of France or the United Kingdom-were infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV); some 22 million--about twice the, population of Mali or Zimbabwe--died of AIDS-related illnesses; and of those, 4.3 million--greater than the entire population of Uruguay or New Zealand--were children.

At the time, it shook our understanding of how to combat the disease. In 1981, it seemed medicine had few Limits and that the individual cases reported were more a medical mystery than the beginnings of a rampaging disease that would claim so many millions of lives. If it were not so frightening, it would seem almost quaint. How did we forget that deadly diseases could crop up at any moment, and that without targetted medicines, which could neutralize their complex methods of attack, we could face an incredibly quick-spreading epidemic-one that, before we could stop it, would turn into a worldwide pandemic?

Now, only a dogged, determined "battle plan"--in the words of United Nations General Assembly President Harri Holkeri-could hope to stop and reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS. In order to come up with such a global plan of action, the General Assembly in September 2000 decided to convene a special session.

The special session on HIV/AIDS opened in New York on 25 June 2001 and it was the first to be devoted to what, on the surface, appears to be a clear-cut health issue, which, however, proved to be anything but clear-cut. When the session ended on the evening of 27 June, Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the press that "some painful differences have been brought into the open. But that is the best place for them. Like AIDS itself, these differences need to be confronted head-on, not swept under the carpet."

The differences--and they were, significant--were met head-on. The extraordinary three-day meeting closed with every single Member State of the United Nations uniting behind an ambitious but vital Declaration of Commitment. More than a straightforward issue of health and medicine, the Declaration treats AIDS as a political, human rights and economic peril.

Heads of State and Government and representatives of all 189 UN Member States called for resources to be found...

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