Paris, June 25 (N°2001-79) - UNESCO
Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura denounced the unequal access to medical care
and highlighted UNESCO’s role in AIDS preventive education as he opened the
4th International Congress Global Health Equity: Medical Progress and Quality
of Life in the 21st Century at Organization Headquarters this morning.
Speaking before going to New York where
he will take part in a roundtable debate on preventive HIV/AIDS education and
care, held as part of the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on
AIDS which opens today, Mr Matsuura said that “it is impossible to remain
silent in the face of the terrible disparities in access to [medical] progress
which is still unavailable to the majority of humanity.”
Mr Matsuura particularly insisted on
AIDS as one of the most tragic aspects of inequitable access to health care: “In
two decades, AIDS has become a veritable international emergency but the problem
is not only medical, far from it. It is a real disaster in terms of development
that is going to weigh - and is already weighing - heavily on world security.
Its consequences will probably be comparable to those of the greatest world
conflicts we have experienced.”
The Director-General stressed that “AIDS
is not a fatality. Its treatment may be complicated and costly, but its modes of
transmission are known, and, after all, easy to avoid. This is why,” he added,
“UNESCO has placed education - education for all, adapted to specific cultural
contexts which might give each the surest means to preserve their health and,
indeed, life - as its top priority in the fight against AIDS.”
UNESCO has been
assigned a special responsibility within the UN system for HIV/AIDS preventive
education. Its approach to the issue focuses on five tasks: advocacy at
all levels; adapting the prevention message to the context of its targeted
audiences; changing risk behaviour and vulnerability; caring for the infected
and coping with the institutional impacts that are undermining development.
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For more information about UNESCO and
preventive HIV/AIDS education: http://www.unesco.org/bpi/eng/aidsfactsheet.html
