AIDS will kill 70 million people over the next 20 years unless rich nations step up their efforts to curb the disease, the United Nations warned today in a report showing the epidemic is still in its early stages.
More than 40 million people worldwide have AIDS or are infected with HIV, the virus that causes the disease, up from 34 million two years ago, and infection rates are climbing, said the latest report from UNAIDS, the agency that coordinates UN AIDS programs.
"We haven't reached the peak of the AIDS epidemic yet," Dr Peter Piot, the UNAIDS executive director, told reporters in an interview, scotching experts' hopes it would level off. "It's an unprecedented epidemic in human history."
AIDS threatens to wipe out a generation in Africa and destabilize the whole continent, warns the report, released ahead of the 14th International Conference on AIDS which opens next week in Barcelona.
"From a pure medical problem, AIDS has become an issue for economic and social development and even for security," Dr Piot warned, saying the disease was eating away Africa's work force, holding back economic development and aggravating famines.
"The world can't afford a whole continent to be destabilized because of AIDS. It's going to have implications for all continents," Dr Piot said.