New York (dpa) - People infected with HIV need better support in
protecting their rights not only to medicine but also to jobs, the
United Nations said ahead of World AIDS Day on Wednesday.
The World Health Organization said health, the AIDS-HIV
and human rights are inextricably linked and programmes to treat
people affected by the disease could be more effective if their human
rights were respected.
"The right to health is central to the HIV response," said
Margaret Chan, the WHO executive director.
"People living with HIV should not only enjoy their right to
health, but also their right to access crucial social services such
as education, employment, housing, social security and even asylum in
some cases," Chan said.
She said HIV-related stigma and discrimination also continued to
undermine the global HIV response.
Chan said the number of HIV-positive people - more than 33 million
worldwide as of 2009 - has stabilized in most regions of the world,
but antiretroviral treatment is available only to one-third of them.
Since it was first diagnosed in the 1980s, AIDS has claimed more
than 25 million lives.
WHO emphasized the effectiveness of preventing mother-to-child
transmission in HIV, but noted that only 53 per cent of pregnant
women living with HIV got such treatment last year.
The agency called for enacting laws and regulations that protect
HIV-patients' rights. For homosexual men, one of the high risk groups
for HIV transmission, the situation is particularly grim for seeking
treatment. Eighty countries still criminalize same-sex relationships,
and six countries apply the death penalty.
More than 50 countries continued to restrict travels and residency
for HIV patients.
The UN Children's Fund said on the eve of World AIDS Day that it
is possible to achieve an AIDS-free generation if efforts are stepped
up for universal access to HIV prevention, treatment and social
protection.
UNICEF director general Anthony Lake said more should be done for
communities hardest hit by AIDS in sub-Sahara Africa, where an
estimated 1,000 babies are infected every day through mother-to-child
transmission.
Michel Sidibe, the head of the programme UN-AIDS, said about
370,000 children are born with HIV each year and each one of the
transmissions could have been prevented.
"We have to stop mothers from dying and babies from becoming
infected with HIV," Sidibe said. "That is why I have called for the
virtual elimination of mother-to-child transmission by 2015."
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