An urgent response which is focused and sustained is required to prevent the spread of AIDS, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, said yesterday.
Speaking at a seminar in Dublin to mark World AIDS Day, he said individuals, communities, governments and international agencies must take collective responsibility for halting the progression of AIDS and HIV, the virus that leads to it.
"There is no room for hesitancy. To wait means to deny the right to life and to health. To wait means to condemn people to a life of continuing poverty and underdevelopment," he said.
He said HIV and AIDS were draining poorer countries of their development potential and causing an erosion of hard-won development gains.
AIDS affects 36 million people worldwide. Some 95 per cent of those infected live in the developing world. Tackling the spread of the virus and its impact was one of the greatest development challenges of our time, Mr Cowen said.
Dr Ruth Barrington, chief executive of the Health Research Board, said it was important to remember people could avoid contracting the disease. Uganda, one of the first nations in sub-Saharan Africa to experience the devastating impact of HIV/AIDS and to take action to control the epidemic, was managing to reverse the number of infections, Mr David Kaweesa Kisitu, of the country's Ministry of Health, told the seminar. Openness about the problem, high-level political commitment to HIV prevention and care, marketing of condoms and sex education programmes had all contributed, he said.
A vaccine to prevent HIV was still some way off, Ms Jane Rowley, of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, said. "In the 17 years since HIV was identified as the cause of AIDS, only one candidate vaccine has entered phase three trials," she said.
The clinical trials are in progress in the United States and Thailand and interim results are due at the end of next year.
A Dublin woman living with AIDS, Ms Linda Reid, said the disease was not just a problem for developing countries. It was also a problem in the Republic, where the number of HIV infections doubled this year. Suggestions that the increase was related to the number of non-nationals entering the State were "dangerous and inaccurate".
The reality was that the biggest increase in infections was among young heterosexual women engaging in unprotected sex, she said.