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World AIDS Day warns of HIV spreads
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia -- The U.N.'s chief official for HIV/AIDS has said that stigma and discrimination remained major barriers to controlling the AIDS pandemic in Africa where close to 30 million people are infected. Speaking on Saturday -- the eve of World AIDS Day -- UNAIDS head Peter Piot said the social prejudice suffered by people with AIDS could be as destructive as the disease itself. He said: "Discrimination and stigma continue to stand as barriers. "Stigma silences individuals and communities, saps their strength, increases their vulnerability, isolates people and deprives them of care of support. "We must break down these barriers or the epidemic will have no chance of being pushed back," he added. Piot said Africa's HIV/AIDS epidemic was fuelling a widening and increasingly serious famine threat in southern Africa, where more than 14 million people in Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe face critical food shortages. "AIDS combining with other factors including droughts, floods and in some cases short-sighted national and international policies cause a steady fall in agricultural production and to cut deep into household income," he said. As its name implies, World AIDS Day will draw attention from nations around the globe. Events of all sorts are planned -- from bake sales in London to parties in Singapore. As nations prepared to mark World AIDS Day, the UK revealed that the number of new cases of HIV looks set to rise by 25 percent. According to new data from the Public Health Laboratory Service (PHLS), by the end of September, 2,945 new diagnoses had been reported for 2002 which is an increase from 2,354 new cases in the same period last year. Dr Kevin Fenton, head of the HIV and STI division of the PHLS Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre, told the Press Association: "We now appear to be seeing more than twice as many new HIV diagnoses each year than we were at the end of the 1990s. "We were very concerned last year when we saw a record number of new HIV diagnoses but these latest figures are even more disturbing. "We are not only diagnosing infections that were acquired many years ago. HIV is a current, not historical problem." To mark World AIDS Day on Sunday, an eastern Indian state plans to unfurl what local officials say is the longest banner ever. The six-kilometre long banner and is printed with slogans seeking to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS prevention, said Anjana Chopra, the top AIDS official in Orissa state. Up to 100,000 people -- mostly students campaigning to raise awareness about AIDS -- will sign the banner, which will be displayed on the main street of the state capital, Bhubaneshwar. About 4 million people in India are affected with HIV, according to the government.
Meanwhile, in South Africa U.S. rapper Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs will headline MTV's "Staying Alive Concert" to be broadcast globally to mark World AIDS Day. "We're here to raise awareness through the world about the still growing epidemic here, but also most importantly to raise awareness to how strong and beautiful you all are," Combs said. It's estimated that one child dies every minute from AIDS complications and one in five people are HIV-positive. "This is a human race war," he said. "And we shouldn't be able to go to sleep at night ... with the knowledge that there are millions and millions of people dying in Africa." In February, U2 singer Bono joined Microsoft founder Bill Gates at the World Economic Forum to bring attention to several issues confronting Africans, including AIDS. Bono said, "What's going on is actually a crisis of the order never experienced before. I think HIV-AIDS has set back development to the point where we're living with statistics that we should not be living with. It's an everyday Holocaust."
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