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World AIDS Day
Aids awareness
Gordon Brown discusses health funding plans on 20th World AIDS Day
"Numbers of new cases of HIV are at their highest since the mid 1980s. "
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has today announced new initiatives to fight AIDS and raise awareness about the disease that affects approximately 33 million people today. Mr. Brown said:
"This week we are launching a new international Taskforce on Innovative Financing for Health Systems to generate new ways of ensuring long-term sustainable funding for health.
"I call on leaders across the world to hold firm to their promises to improve the health of the poorest, even in the midst of the current economic challenges.
"That is why the government has increased funding to enable healthcare providers to meet their sexual health targets, and why particular effort is being placed on improving preventative interventions for homosexual men for whom rates of diagnoses have continued to increase."
Numbers of new cases of HIV are at their highest since the mid 1980s. The Health Protection Agency estimates that there were 3,160 new HIV diagnoses among gay men in the UK in 2007, 500 of which were diagnosed after the point at which treatment should have begun.
Early diagnosis and treatment is key to fighting the virus. The Prime Minister continued:
"And that is why this year’s World AIDS Day focuses on the simple actions all of us can take to support those living with HIV and AIDS, to tackle prejudice wherever it occurs, and to protect ourselves and each other from infection."
Britain can count itself among the world leaders in the fight against AIDS, with the British government assigning £6 billion to health until 2015 and an additional £1 billion exclusively for the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
