UNITED NATIONS: A Kuwaiti Health Ministry official said yesterday that Kuwait was committed to eradicate the HIV/AIDS, and called on the international community to do more to fight the epidemic even though "significant" progress has been achieved to save more lives.

Addressing the General Assembly's High-Level meeting on HIV/AIDS, Dr Hind Abdelaziz Al-Shoumer, the Head of the Office on AIDS, statistics and information at the Kuwaiti Health Ministry, said the international community "should be pleased with the significant progress achieved so far to fight HIV/AIDS, increased treatment access, saving millions of lives of affected people and reducing stigma and discrimination.

However, she added, and despite the "substantial progress achieved so far, we have to acknowledge that much remains to be done to reach our objectives," as stated in the 2001 declaration of commitment on HIV/AIDS and the 2006 political declaration.

The three-day Assembly High-Level meeting opened Wednesday with the participation of 3,000 figures, including 30 heads of State and government, along with senior officials, representatives of international organizations, civil society and people living with HIV, to chart a path for the future of the AIDS response. The Kuwaiti delegation was headed by Kuwaiti Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Mansour Ayyad Al-Otaibi. It included Dr Al-Shoumer, Mohammad Faisal Al-Mutairi, Charge d'Affaires, and Hasan Abulhasan, Third Secretary.

Dr Al-Shoumer told the Assembly "we believe that this High-Level meeting represents a unique opportunity to renew our commitment and sustain our efforts to continue fighting HIV/AIDS to achieve our goals and to reach a world free of HIV infections and free of AIDS related deaths." She said Kuwait is "committed to fight HIV/AIDS within its commitment to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)" to be achieved by 2015.

Since the diagnosis of the first HIV case in Kuwait in 1984, she stated, the Government, keen on the importance of prevention and care of HIV/AIDS cases, formulated, through a ministerial decree, a multi-sectorial high level National AIDS Control Committee which established the national strategic plan focusing on prevention, education and treatment.

Kuwait is one of the pioneer countries which has a law for prevention and control of HIV/AIDS comprising the legal context for implementation of the national strategy and ensuring the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHIV) regarding work, education and treatment, and protecting the privacy and confidentiality of their information and fighting stigma and discrimination," she declared.

In Kuwait, she added, couples are bound by law to conduct premarital medical checkups, including HIV testing, for early detection of the virus in order to prevent its transmission, noting that this law does not prevent marriage. We have succeeded in preventing mother to child transmission through early treatment for HIV-positive mothers and good follow up," she said.

She recalled that Kuwait hosted 4 international conferences about HIV/AIDS in the last two decades and published a lot of studies and researches on the subject.
Treatment for HIV/AIDS, she noted, is available in Kuwait and its protocol conforms to the World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines and is available free of charge for all infected people, regardless of nationality or gender.

She noted that Kuwait voluntarily donates annually 500,000 to the global fund "out of our solidarity and support to the international community's efforts" to fight infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, Tuberculoses and Malaria, and participates actively with the various international organizations, agencies and programs concerning HIV/AIDS.

She recalled that Kuwait submitted to the Joint UN Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) in March 2010 its first report reflecting the situation of HIV/AIDS in Kuwait and its vision and plan for future work to update and implement the strategic plan and operational policy.

We are looking forward to sharing and exchanging information and experiences (with other Member States) to achieve our goals," she concluded. At the end of the High-Level meeting, the Assembly, deeply concerned that AIDS already had claimed 30 million lives and orphaned 16 million children since the virus HIV was first discovered in 1981, promised to partner with all stakeholders to implement "bold and decisive action" to wipe out what remained of an unprecedented global human tragedy despite significant progress in the past decade to combat the disease.

We solemnly declare our commitment to end the epidemic with renewed political will and strong, accountable leadership," the Assembly stated in a 17-page Political Declaration on HIV/AIDS, unanimously adopted by the participants with a few reservations from Syria, on behalf of the Arab Group, the Holy See and other delegations.

The Assembly expressed deep concern that many countries had been unable to achieve the goals set forth in its 2001 and 2006 declarations on the subject, and stressed the urgent need to recommit to them, as well as to commit to and fully implement "new, ambitious and achievable targets." The Assembly also promised to "seize this turning point" and redouble efforts to achieve by 2015 universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support, with a view to realizing the sixth Millennium Development Goal of halting the spread of HIV by 2015.

Those efforts included programs for HIV education, particularly among youth, expanded HIV testing and counseling, improved access to condoms and sterile injecting equipment, and stronger health-sector prevention intervention, particularly in remote areas.

Furthermore, the Assembly committed, also by 2015, to halve sexual transmission of HIV and transmission among intravenous drug users, eliminate mother-to-child transmission, significantly reduce AIDS-related maternal deaths, halve tuberculosis deaths in people living with HIV, and put 15 million people living with the disease on antiretroviral drug therapy. Also the Assembly committed to work to close the 6 billion annual HIV/AIDS resource gap by 2015 through greater strategic investment and funding, and to reach a significant level of annual global expenditures on HIV and AIDS", which UNAIDS estimated to be between 22 billion to 24 billion in low- and middle-income countries, by increasing national and traditional sources of funding, including official development assistance (ODA).

Speaking on behalf of the Arab group, Bashar Jaafari of Syria said the Assembly should take into account the religious and cultural values of Member States. Despite Syria's accession to consensus, he reiterated the group's "complete rejection" of those parts of the text that mentioned certain groups among the list of populations considered to be the most vulnerable, including men having sex with other men, drug users and sex workers.

Reacting to the Declaration, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on Member States to move quickly to honor their commitments and reach the life-saving goals they have set, and to take all measures to eliminate new HIV infections among children by 2015. He urged governments, networks of people living with HIV, civil society organizations, the private sector and international organizations to redouble their efforts, including by making available the necessary funds by 2015 to eradicate the disease. --- Kuwait Times