Scaling Up Evidence-Based Action

by Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, Executive Director, UNFPA

Thank you, Madam Chairperson.

It is a pleasure to be here with you. And it is also a pleasure to deliver these opening remarks on behalf of all 10 co-sponsoring agencies of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and, in particular, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund.

I would like to make five points today, which deserve our urgent attention as we move forward for HIV prevention.

The first point is that current HIV prevention efforts are brutally insufficient. We must scale up prevention with and within treatment and care.

Although there are a growing number of proven prevention strategies, it is estimated that fewer than 1 in 5 people at risk have access to these interventions. As a result, close to 5 million people were newly infected last year alone.

Clearly, we must do more.

Unless greater action is taken, millions more people will become infected with HIV by the end of the decade. And without a significant reduction in new infections, it will not be possible to keep pace with the number of people with HIV/AIDS in need of treatment. We will never catch up.

Therefore, expanding the delivery of life-saving prevention information, education and services is absolutely critical. And it is especially vital for young people, who represent half of all new infections. One young person told me that we adults say that they are too young to know, and young people respond to us by saying that they are too young to die.

This brings me to my second point. We must listen to young people. We should not ask only what we can do for them, but what they can do for themselves and for the world. They are agents of change. They have the energy and the conviction to be leaders. We must support their leadership so that together we can conquer HIV/AIDS in their own lifetimes. Investing in young people is the only way to bring about long-lasting change.

The third point is that we know what works. The biggest success stories focus on evidence-informed strategies that work. These include:

• Life skills and education on HIV and AIDS for young people both within and outside of school
• Voluntary and confidential testing and counselling
• Comprehensive harm reduction services for drug users
• The prevention and treatment of other sexually transmitted infections, and
• Safer sexual behaviour—including abstinence, delaying the onset of sexual activity, reducing the number of partners, being faithful, and consistently using condoms.

Experience and evidence also show that an effective response depends on:

• Ensuring greater involvement of people living with HIV and AIDS, and
• Supporting community-based responses

All of these and a way forward will be further elaborated in a UNAIDS Policy Position Paper on Intensifying HIV Prevention, which will be presented to the UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board later this month.

The fourth point is that we must reduce rising infection rates among women and adolescent girls. We must ensure universal access to education, and sexual and reproductive health services and reproductive rights if we are to meet the UNGASS and Millennium development goals and targets.

AIDS has a woman’s face because they are vulnerable to HIV infection due to social and economic inequities that are beyond their control.

The Global Coalition on Women and AIDS has identified other key actions to give them control of their lives. These include:

• Promoting and protecting women’s rights
• Ensuring education for all, especially for girls
• Providing female-controlled methods such as female condoms, and
• Mounting mass public awareness campaigns to help change social norms and practices, such as child marriage and gender discrimination and violence, which put women and adolescent girls at risk.

My friends, our collective duty is to transform these good words into good deeds. And this brings me to my final and fifth point. We need courageous and committed leadership. We must give priority to scaling up these actions in national AIDS programmes.

Let us have an open and honest debate and learn from those who have scaled up. And let us bring renewed energy and commitment to this effort. If we focus like a laser on scaling up education, information and services, we will reach those in need. If we build stronger partnerships among governments, the United Nations system, youth and women, and people living with HIV and AIDS, we will be effective. If we keep the promises we have made, we will achieve the goals we have set for ourselves. We will combat HIV and AIDS. We will restore hope where there is now despair, and we will replace scepticism with confidence.

Thank you.