Washington - US President Barack Obama on Wednesday hailed “tremendous progress” made in the fight against Aids and expressed hope of eradicating the disease that has claimed 25-million lives worldwide.
“At a time when so many men and women are living with HIV and Aids every day, let's also recommit ourselves to build on the tremendous progress we've made both in preventing and treating the disease and ending the stigma and discrimination that too often surround it,” Obama said in an online video.
As the president commemorated World Aids Day, dozens of people protested outside the White House in a mock funeral procession to denounce the lack of access to care for the most destitute.
One demonstrator threw herself on the ground with cries of pain as two women clad as white-bloused nurses rushed to her side. Participants in the demonstration, organised by anti-Aids groups, then sung gospels.
Philadelphia pastor Reverend Christopher Comer “implored the president to do more to keep his campaign pledges”.
Comer said 2010 was the year by which the United States and other world leaders had promised “to reach as close as possible to universal access to treatment, care and prevention”.
The Obama administration launched an ambitious plan in July to reduce by 25 percent each year the number of new infections in the United States by 2015.
The National HIV-Aids Strategy is the first-ever comprehensive and co-ordinated HIV-Aids strategy with clear and measurable targets for the United States. Federal funds for the research reached $2.8-billion in 2009.
In addition, the United States helped provide life-saving anti-retroviral treatment for 3.2-million men, women and children worldwide through the President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) this year, up by some three-quarters of a million people in 2009, according to the State Department.
“It's my hope that together we can move closer to the day when we eliminate this disease from the face of the Earth,” Obama said.
Top Obama administration officials were due to later participate in a White House event marking the occasion.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meanwhile vowed the United States would remain a “global leader in the fight against HIV/Aids - today, tomorrow, and every day until the disease is eradicated”.
“We have saved millions of lives from Aids over the past decade. By investing in what we know works, we can save millions more in the future,” she said in a statement.
The United States has committed to support over four million people on treatment - double the number of patients during the first five years of Pepfar, which then-president George Bush launched in 2004.
The Obama administration has made Pepfar and the fight against Aids cornerstones of the US Global Health Initiative, which aims to strengthen US co-operation with partners around the world to reinforce “the global effort needed to defeat Aids,” said Clinton.
Her husband, former president Bill Clinton, hailed “dramatic progress” in combating the disease. When he left office in 2001, nearly 36 million people were living with HIV/Aids and only 200 000 were receiving the treatment they needed.
The United States this year also pledged four billion dollars between 2011 and 2013 to the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a partnership between governments, civil society, the private sector and communities affected by the three killer diseases.
The Global Fund has become the main source of finance for programs to fight Aids, TB and malaria since it was set up in 2002. Its ultimate aim is to “free the world of the burden” of the three illnesses, of which Aids is the biggest killer.
“In spite of these efforts, only one-third of people who need treatment are receiving it,” Clinton warned in an op-ed published in the British newspaper The Independent.
“We risk losing our momentum, unless we find new ways to fill the gaps left by reductions in government funding caused by the global economic crisis. And we need to save more lives with the money we do have.”
His foundation is involved in efforts to fight the disease.
Aids-related deaths are estimated at about 1.8 million globally last year by the UN agency for the disease. Many of those who died from the disease also had tuberculosis, and 1.3 million victims were in Africa.
Malaria claimed around one million lives in 2008 and tuberculosis about 1.7 million last year, according to World Health Organisation figures. - Sapa-AFP