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WHO warns: HIV/AIDS epidemic is still building up causing serious challenges to humanity.

Cairo 22 April —The HIV/AIDS epidemic is still building up.  Estimations indicate that world wide forty million people, are living with HIV/AIDS by the end of year 2001, while deaths due to AIDS reached twenty five million.  In this sense, HIV/AIDS is considered one of the most serious health challenges ever known to humanity.

More than 600,000 people are living with HIV/AIDS in the Eastern Mediterranean Region of WHO.  This represents a 50% increase in numbers of estimated for the last year.  Millions of people living in this Region, for one reason or another, may be exposed to HIV or Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD). Three countries in the Region are already in a state of generalized epidemic.

The Eastern Mediterranean Region is also facing many challenges in the fight against AIDS. There have been several incidents in the Region where severe outbreaks of HIV have occurred as a result of infected imported blood or blood products, or as a result of injecting drug use.  This is in addition to increasing rates of HIV infection reported in several countries of the Region among vulnerable groups such as young people, prisoners, patients with sexually transmitted diseases, and other high-risk groups about whom not much information is available.

Neglected or poorly treated STD present great problems in terms of HIV transmission, economic loss and resistance to first line anti-microbials.  So, adopting more sophisticated blood safety programmes, paying greater attention to STD treatment and prevention of mother-to-child transmission, since the current drugs have managed to achieve high rates of success in this area, are three vital approaches in the fight against HIV/AIDS and the main features of the regional plan of action.

WHO's Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean is organizing the Twelfth Inter-Country Meeting of National AIDS and STD Programme Managers in Beirut, Lebanon from 23 to 26 April 2002.

The Agenda of the meeting is linked to the Strategic Plan for Improving Health Sector Response in the Countries of the Eastern Mediterranean Region for the period 2002 to 2005, a plan endorsed by the Ministers of Health at the 48th session of Regional Countries held in Riyadh in October 2001.

The meeting will address the need to build a clear understanding of how to implement the plan and to set the indicators for monitoring and evaluation of progress.

Specifically the meeting is seeking to fulfill the following objectives:

• Review the HIV/AIDS and STD situation in the Region and the progress in achieving appropriate response in the countries.
• Identify mechanisms for operationalizing the new health sector strategy for HIV/AIDS in the Region at the country level and developing corresponding work plans.
• Develop a consensus plan for STD control and surveillance and inter-programmatic linkages.

One of the main objectives of the meeting is to translate the targets and strategies into tangible actions, and this will be the role of the participants, who include national AIDS programme managers from all countries of the Region, Epidemiologists from the national AIDS programmes and experts from STD control programmes, as well as experts from other programmes related to access to HIV/AIDS care and Anti Retro-Viral treatment,.  NGOs and other UN organizations and concerned parties have been invited as well.

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