World Bank says greater prevention efforts needed to reverse course of HIV/AIDS epidemic

WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 (Xinhua) -- Marking World AIDS Day 2009, the World Bank on Tuesday urged countries and their development partners to intensify efforts to prevent new HIV infections to curb the continuing spread of the disease, and reaffirmed its own commitment to fund effective HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and treatment programs in developing countries.

Via video, World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick applauded the considerable achievements by countries and development partners in expanding access to HIV prevention, care, and treatment, while also noting the enormous challenges that remain.

Preventing new infections, he said, remained vital to reach the Millennium Development Goal of halting and reversing the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

" Intensifying efforts to prevent new infections is essential if we are to ensure that AIDS treatment is sustainable. A barrier to all our efforts against this disease is the stigma and discrimination experienced by people with HIV. This has been reduced, but it is not gone by any measure," Zoellick said in opening remarks to a high-level World AIDS Day event.

Zoellick also reaffirmed the Bank's sustained commitment to funding effective HIV/AIDS programs, and added that an important factor that has hindered progress on HIV has been the lack of food security, because when people do not have enough food to eat, treatment is less effective.

Over the past three years, the Bank has committed almost one billion U.S. dollars through grants, loans, and credits to HIV programs.

According to a new study of HIV-infected adults in Haiti, supported by the Bank, poor nutrition, aggravated by rising food prices, is reducing the effectiveness of life-saving AIDS drugs in adults who are chronically hungry and suffer from weak immune systems as a result.

Reinforcing the links between nutrition and effective AIDS treatment, the new Haiti report shows that hunger further weakens the immune systems of HIV-infected adults and undermines the effectiveness of their life-saving AIDS treatment.