People living with and affected by HIV and their communities must be at the centre of the response to the global AIDS epidemic, which has claimed more than 33 million people globally, speakers said today as the General Assembly continued its high-level meeting on ending the scourge by 2030.
Warning that the international community must not let its current battle against COVID-19 cost its war against HIV/AIDS, world leaders detailed national efforts to tackle the threat to public health posed by one virus despite the shocks reverberating from the other, as the General Assembly continued its high‑level meeting on HIV/AIDS today.
Countries must embrace hard lessons learned over four decades of the HIV epidemic — including the need for human rights-based action focused on populations most at risk — as they confront the “colliding pandemics” of COVID-19 and its fallout, which threaten to derail crucial public health gains, ministers stressed during the second day of the high-level General Assembly meeting on HIV/AIDS.
Following is the text of UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ video message to the Global Fund’s twentieth anniversary today:
Democratic Republic of Congo authorities noted the end of the lava flow from the eruption of Nyiragongo, as well as a significant decrease in tremors in the area. Prime Minister Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde Kyenge announced yesterday that people could return to Goma and the territory around the volcano.
World leaders in the General Assembly today committed to “urgent and transformative action” to end the gender inequalities, restrictive laws and multiple forms of discrimination that perpetuate the global AIDS epidemic, adopting a lengthy Political Declaration that spells out measures to stop the disease in its tracks by 2030.
Following are UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed’s remarks at the opening of the high-level meeting on HIV/AIDS today:
More than 271,000 people have been impacted and over 26,000 displaced by monsoon-related flash floods and landslides in south-western Sri Lanka, humanitarian affairs officials say. The impacts of the south-west monsoon come as Sri Lanka works to mitigate the environmental impact of a sinking cargo ship near Colombo.
Humanitarian workers in Sudan report that the security situation in the town of Ag Geneina in western Darfur is stable but remains tense and unpredictable. More than 230,000 people were displaced by the conflict in Darfur since the beginning of 2021, more than four times the 53,000 displaced in all of 2020.
The General Assembly decided today to convene a high-level meeting from 8 to 10 June to take stock of global efforts to end the HIV/AIDS crisis by 2030, adopting a draft resolution to that effect after a lengthy debate on the situation in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine.
The Mission in South Sudan deployed a Nepalese Quick Reaction Force Team to Cueibet to support local police protecting civilians from a potential conflict between armed groups, following the killing of a young man. The peacekeepers intercepted the groups and remained in the area until the situation was stable.
Following is UN Secretary‑General António Guterres’ message for World AIDS Day, observed on 1 December:
A new United Nations Children’s Fund report shows that 320,000 children and young people under the age of 20 were infected with HIV in 2019 – about one every 100 seconds, bringing the total number of children living with HIV to 2.8 million. About half of children worldwide had access to life-saving treatment; nearly 100,000 children died of AIDS.
Without mitigation efforts, COVID-19-related service disruptions could result in more than 500,000 extra deaths from tuberculosis, HIV and other AIDS-related illnesses in sub-Saharan Africa from 2020 to 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Joint United Nations Programme against HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) said today.
Following is UN Secretary‑General António Guterres’ message for World AIDS Day, observed on 1 December:
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has appointed Winifred “Winnie” Karagwa Byanyima of Uganda as the next Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).
While the global fight to defeat AIDS has produced remarkable progress over the past decade — with HIV infections among children and deaths from related illnesses among people of all ages nearly cut in half — greater efforts are needed to overcome one of history’s greatest health crises, delegates told the General Assembly today as they registered mixed results in reversing negative trends.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres announced the appointment of Shannon Hader of the United States as Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director of Programme at the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).
Following are UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed’s remarks at the World AIDS Day high-level event on adolescent girls and young women, with the Global Fund and the Government of South Africa, in Johannesburg today:
Following is UN Secretary‑General António Guterres’ message for World AIDS Day, observed on 1 December:
