AIDS seen rising in Asia, terrorism identified as a threat: Red Cross
International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) Juan Manuel Suarez del Toro (F) listens, as vice president of Intl committee of Red cross societies Jacques Forster (back) answers a question during a press conference in Manila 24 November 2002. The Red Cross warned that Asia Pacific governments must act fast to curb rising incidence of AIDS in the region, even as they also faced the problem of terrorism. AFP PHOTO Joel NITO
By Jason Gutierrez
MANILA, (AFP) - Asia-Pacific governments must act fast to curb rising AIDS figures and also to face the challenge of terrorism, officials of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said here last Sunday.
Some 25 million people have been killed by AIDS since the debilitating illness came into public consciousness two decades ago, IFRC president Juan Manuel Suarez del Toro told reporters here at the start of a regional conference.
"What we know from the disease apart from the fact that it can kill is that it threatens family structures, communities, socio-economic development and the future of nations," del Toro said.
"The stigma and discrimination attached to the HIV/AIDS also has an impact on people's dignity," he said.
Statistics released by the group here showed that there are more than one million HIV/AIDS infections in the region, making it "the most pressing public health" challenge to date.
"Asia is set to suffer the next big wave of the pandemic unless we act now. The region will experience the same socio-economic devastation as elsewhere where family structures are breaking down, the number of orphans are rising dramatically and where development has been put back by decades," the del Toro said.
Mario Nery, a Red Cross governor and chairman of its planning committee, said that four years ago at the last IFRC regional conference, AIDS "did not register in our Richter scale of disasters."
But now "there is no time to lose," he warned.
Bernand Gardiner, who heads an HIV/AIDS unit for the Red Cross, warned that the "window is fast closing" on the opportunity to reverse the AIDS problem in the region.
"There's been very clear warnings over the last decade that it's best to try to keep the numbers as low as possible and that action is needed to do that," he said.
"The response is varied across the region and we're really at the end of the period of time of this opportunity."
If governments and health experts fail to address the problem "we may go over the threshold of ever being able to address it adequately in the future," added Nery.
"There is no time to lose in so far as this problem is concerned because in Asia, there are one million people every year who become affected by this disease. Twenty percent of our population in Asia is subject to contamination," he said.
Meanwhile, the Red Cross also has "to become creative and very flexible" in trying to respond to disasters caused by terrorist attacks and there is an urgent need to "find out how best to be efficient, and to complement efforts with those of other organizations," Nery said.
Terrorism "is in fact a new challenge for many of us," conceded Didier Cherpitel, secretary general of the Red Cross federation, stressing that humanitarian organizations must make sure they are well equipped to respond to attacks.
He noted that the Red Cross and Red Crescent response to the attacks in Bali, for instance, was immediate primarily because the community had been trained to respond and help in times of disasters.