Under the slogan "Stop Aids: Keep the Promise - Leadership" the world celebrates on first December the World AIDS Day. On this occasion, the Director General of the Executive Office of the GCC Council of Health Ministers Dr. Tawfeeq Ahmed Khoja said the slogan of the World AIDS Day this year carries a number of meanings and goals for controlling and preventing this fatal disease. He said AIDS prevalence rates around the world have decreased due to implementation of HIV prevention programs, abiding by Islamic Sharia principles, and avoiding illegitimate relationships. "The 2007 estimations of the World Health Organization have shown that about 33.2 million people are living with HIV, about 2.5 million are newly infected (6800 new cases every year), and that about 2.1 million have died of AIDS", he said. "Africa is the mostly affected, with about 68% of the total AIDS cases".
He said the numbers of HIV affected people in Eastern Europe and Central Asia have increased from 63000 to 1.6 million since the signature of the UN Declaration for Commitment to AIDS Prevention in 2001. The number of death cases resulting from AIDS related diseases in the last two years has decreased due to usage of HIV antibiotics. However, AIDS remains the top killer disease in the world and the first death causing disease in Africa.
"In view of the volume of the problem and its developmental impacts, the responsibility of confronting it cannot be shouldered by a single body or sector", he said "We are all responsible of it and any required success cannot be reached without the combined efforts of all concerned economic, social, educational, health, and cultural sectors".
He said the GCC Council of Health Ministers and its Executive Office had their activities in combating the epidemic. "The AIDS prevalence among the GCC populations is the least compared to the other countries in the Eastern Mediterranean Region", he said. "Sexual relations play the most important role in transmitting the disease in the region".
According to Dr. Khoja the GCC Ministries of Health have adopted a GCC strategy for preventing the disease. The resolutions and recommendations of the GCC Council of Health Ministers and its Executive Office involved a number of actions to be taken for controlling the disease. Such actions included termination of importing blood from abroad, intensifying awareness efforts, developing ethical concepts, alleviating the psychological and social burdens carried by AIDS victims, avoiding isolation of patients, providing medication, supporting relative research activities aimed at finding effective treatments for the disease, confirming safe transmission of blood and blood products, application of tests on expatriate manpower entering the GCC countries, etc.
He said the Executive Office, in coordination with the GCC Ministers of Health, the United Nations Development Program, and UNICEF, organized a number of workshops including participants form the different concerned governmental and non governmental bodies in each of the GCC countries.