United Nations - Vice-President Al Gore opened the first public health debate by the UN Security Council yesterday and pledged an extra $150 million to the fight against AIDS and other infectious diseases. The total includes $100 million to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS in Africa, Asia, eastern Europe and other areas; $50 million is for purchasing vaccines against diseases such as hepatitis B, meningitis and yellow fever.
Mr Gore appealed to council members to adopt a new and wider definition of world security to include global environmental and health hazards. "The heart of the security agenda is protecting lives, and we now know that the number of people who will die of AIDS in the first decade of the 21st century will rival the number that died in all the wars in all the decades of the 20th century." In a speech linking disease and conflict, the UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, urged the council to prevent wars from helping to spread AIDS, particularly in Africa. Mr Annan said "of two dozen or more conflicts raging around the world, roughly half are in Africa", where more than 22 million adults carry the HIV virus which causes AIDS.
Mr Peter Piot, the executive director of UNAIDS, told the meeting that "conflict and HIV are entangled as twin evils" through the crime of rape. "War is the instrument of AIDS and rape is an instrument of war." He cited one study which showed that 17 per cent of women raped had become infected with the HIV virus as a result.