Surveillance for the HIV virus is weak in most of the world and prevention and treatment programmes often fail to reach high-risk drug users, homosexuals and sex workers, the World Health Organisation said.
In a message marking World AIDS Day, being celebrated under the theme of Accountability, the WHO’s acting director-general Anders Nordstrom said that tackling the AIDS epidemic remained one of the world’s most pressing public health challenges.
“Accountability — the theme of this World AIDS Day — requires every president and prime minister, every parliamentarian and politician, to decide and declare that `AIDS stops with me,'” the outgoing UN secretary general said.