Marking 30 years of the HIV- AIDS pandemic, scores of heads of state and government and ministers took to the UN General Assembly podium on Wednesday to list their country's accomplishments and list challenges in the battle.

 

The General Assembly High Level Meeting on AIDS is taking place 10 years after the UN Special Session on HIV/AIDS and also marks five years since signing of the Political Declaration in which UN member states committed to moving towards universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support.

 

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon UN recalled how three decades ago AIDS was spreading while "Today, we have a chance to end this epidemic once and for all."

 

Now, instead of fear, there is hope, he said.

 

"Today, HIV is on a steep decline in some of the most affected countries. Countries like Ethiopia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe," he said. "They had the largest epidemics in the world, and they have cut infection rates by one quarter."

 

"Globally, more than 6 million people now get treatment," Ban said. "All of these advances come thanks to you and the commitments you made, first 10 years ago and then again in 2006. Today, the challenge has changed. Today, we gather to end AIDS."

 

However, President Joseph Deiss of the General Assembly said 10 million people still have no access to treatment and far too many people were still being infected, adding it was necessary to continue complementary and closely-linked prevention, treatment, care and support measures.

 

"We have reached a critical moment in time," he said. "We must take a holistic approach and integrate the response to AIDS into broader development programs."

 

Michel Sidibe, executive director of the Joint UN Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), recalled how 30 years the disease was called the gay plague and slime disease. People were afraid of each other and there was no hope.

 

"This image should not disappear. It is part of our history," he said.

 

Sidibe said the AIDS movement was the story of a people breaking the conspiracy of silence, demanding equity and dignity, confronting societies'wrongs, seizing their rights, and making a passionate call for social justice. Since then, a compact had been made between the global North and the South, which had produced lifesaving results.

 

Now, More than 6.6 million people are being treated in low- and middle- income countries, he said, pointing out that since the initial success stories in Uganda and Thailand 56 countries, including 36 in Africa, have been able to stabilize the epidemic and reduce the number of infections significantly.

 

Infections have been reduced by 35 percent in South Africa and by more than half in India, the UNAIDS chief said. In China, the HIV mortality rate had fallen by 64 percent, Sidibe said. Many other countries had reached universal access to treatment.

 

He voiced what was repeated several times, and that was a call for "a transformational agenda" of "zero infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths."

 

To put a personal face on the disease, a woman from Ukraine openly living with HIV, Tetyana Afansiadi, told her story to the delegates.

 

She told how she had been living with HIV and using drugs for 13 years, had hepatitis C for almost 11 years but now has a husband and an 8-year-old son. Neither have HIV.

 

Three years ago she took part in a drug therapy program that has enabled her to live, work, and take care of her son.

 

"Drug dependency and HIV-infection require treatment, not prosecution," she said.

 

Given that opioid substitution therapy in her home city had changed the lives of people like her, it was time to stop refusing antiretroviral treatment to people who used drugs.

 

While the heads of states and government and ministers, usually those heading up health departments, spoke in the General Assembly hall under bright lights, scores more of delegates attended five panel sessions and about 40 individual side events.

 

Some samplings from the spotlighted dark-green podium in the great hall:

 

President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, said, "It is time to galvanize member states to commit to a transformative agenda that overcomes the barriers to an effective, equitable and sustainable response to HIV and AIDS."

 

Jose Angel Cordova Villalobos, health minister of Mexico, called for states to implement friendly, non-discriminatory healthcare systems as well as sex education in order to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.

 

"To achieve this, we call to all the countries congregated here today in order that your actions are based in the framework of respect to the human rights and focusing on gender equity, that allow to consolidate an effective response to the HIV/AIDS without stigmas, discrimination, homophobia, transphobia; as well as any type of violence," he said, referring, in part, to transsexuals.

 

The vice president of Mauritius, Monique Bellepeau, said, "The adverse impact of the AIDS epidemic on the socioeconomic progress, particularly in the developing countries, dictates that there is no time for complacency."

 

She added, "After wrestling with AIDS for the past three decades, we are today equipped with a vast body of knowledge and various new tools to urgently complete the task. No less than strict prevention efforts and universal access to treatment, care and support are required."

 

The speeches continue Thursday and on the final day of the three-day meeting, UN member states are expected to adopt a declaration to guide country responses to HIV over the next five years.

 

Xinhua