world are women.
Latest figures show that there were five million new HIV infections and over three million deaths from Aids in 2002.
In some countries in sub-Saharan Africa, twice as many young women are now getting the disease as young men.
Dr Peter Piot, director of UNAIDS, told a press conference in London that HIV and Aids was not “an equal opportunities disease” but rather “an unequal opportunities disease” affecting the most marginalised and disadvantaged, particularly in the poorest areas across the globe.
The HIV epidemic is now “fuelling a widening and deadly famine in southern Africa”, he said, with more than 14 million people at risk of starvation in Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The slogan for World Aids Day 2002, ‘Live and Let Live’, concentrates on the impact stigma and discrimination has on individuals with the disease. Dr Piot said stigma leads to loneliness, social ostracism and shame. In turn these can deter people from seeking testing and even life-saving treatments.
“Every country can pay for an army but this epidemic is a battle for survival as well,” Dr Piot said, adding: “Governments and people in America, Britain and Europe face a moral responsibility. This is becoming one of the greatest threats for stability in the world.”
Professor Alan Whiteside, of the University of Natal in South Africa, said: “HIV and Aids is not just a health crisis, it is a development crisis as well. Agricultural workers are lost. The learning from generation to generation is lost. Children are growing up unloved,

unsocialised and uneducated.
“Life expectancy in large parts of Africa has plummeted.