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Kofi Annan on the New York media parley on HIV/AIDS

Sunday, February 8,   2004

United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Kofi  Annan  has urged media leaders to use influence to spread information in fight against AIDS. ‘You can bring the disease out of the shadows and get people talking about it in an open and informed way," the Secretary-General said at Thursdays launch in New York of the Global Media AIDS Initiative, an alliance between the UN system and the media born of a partnership between the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the Kaiser Family Foundation.

 Addressing  the select group of top media executives, Annan said the public still faces a profound lack of awareness about HIV/AIDS and asked them to use their influence to spread information that people need to protect themselves from the deadly disease. "If there is one thing that we have learned in the two decades of this epidemic, it is that in the world of AIDS, silence is death.

"You can create an enabling environment, where individuals are free to explore ways of keeping themselves safe and changing their behaviour as necessary," he told participants. Noting that recent surveys from more than 40 countries show that more than half of all adolescents and young adults have serious misconceptions about HIV/AIDS and about how the virus is transmitted, Mr. Annan said, "We must and we can change this situation."

He said “broadcasters could designate the fight against HIV/AIDS as a corporate priority. They could dedicate airtime to public service messages and provide prominent news coverage to the epidemic. They could also air special educational or awareness-raising programming. "More widely, you can join together to form partnerships that draw on shared reach and resources, as some of you have already done," he said. "You can reach out to other organizations, such as Government departments, NGOs [non-governmental organizations] and civil society groups. You can offer resources and access to airtime, while your partners can provide expertise."

 The Secretary-General said the UN family and the media could build an alliance with an ambitious agenda, one that would inform, educate and entertain people "as a means to giving them the knowledge and incentive they need to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS." "I believe this is a unique opportunity none of us would want to miss - and its greatest impact will be where it is most needed, among young people," he said. "If we can get young people to take the lead in the movement for change, the pandemic can be turned around." 

Meanwhile, the UN latest statistics on the global epidemic remain daunting. “Today 8,000 people will lose their lives to HIV/AIDS and another 14.000- 10 people every single minute will become infected. The realities of today’s global epidemic are graver than even the worst case  predictions of 10 years ago. AIDS killed more than 3 million people in 2003 and an estimated 5 million people became infected bringing to some 40 million the number currently living with the virus.”

Till date, “more than 20 million have already died since the first clinical evidence of the disease was reported in 1981.”

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