Church leaders are not doing enough to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS, according to the senior United Nations figure in the fight against the epidemic.
Speaking ahead of a visit to Ireland today, Dr Peter Piot said he believed there was reluctance at the top of church hierarchies to deal with sexual health issues. He contrasted this with missionaries and aid workers on the ground, who were "pragmatic" people actively trying to prevent the spread of the disease.
Dr Piot, who has been director of UNAIDS since it was founded in 1995, praised the commitment to the issue of the Taoiseach, whom he meets today. He described Ireland's financial contribution to UNAIDS as "below average" but acknowledged that this will increase shortly.
Mr Ahern told the UN General Assembly in New York last year that Ireland would allocate an additional €34 million per year to the fight against HIV/AIDS. This is on top of the €18 million it spent on HIV/AIDS related programmes in 2000.
Dr Piot said Ireland could make a big difference to the efforts by developing countries to counter AIDS through the State's aid programme, the efforts of missionaries and aid agencies, and also through our membership of the Security Council.
Almost 22 million people have died from AIDS, and a further 36 million are living with HIV. Worse, as Mr Piot points out, the epidemic tends to kill the most active members of the economy, such as doctors, managers or teachers.
"In Zambia, for example, more teachers die each year from AIDS than qualify from training college. So there's no point in helping poor countries without dealing with the issue; otherwise, you're just throwing money away."
Treatment is as important as prevention, according to Dr Piot. While the price of life-saving drugs to treat the disease has dropped by 90 per cent in the past year, they are still too expensive for victims in the poorest countries, he says.
Thus, while almost 100 per cent of Europeans have access to these drug treatments, only 50,000 out of Africa's 25 million sufferers can afford treatment.
From Belgium, Dr Piot trained as a doctor and microbiologist and was one of the discoverers of the Ebola virus in Zaire in 1976.
