Africa launches push to prevent new HIV cases

JOHANNESBURG, Apr 12 (Reuters) African leaders have launched a drive to halt new HIV infections, saying prevention may be the best remaining hope to stop the AIDS pandemic from cutting an ever-deeper swathe across the continent.

The African Union (AU) said programmes on education, counselling, testing and condom distribution could stop 29 million of the 45 million new HIV cases projected to occur worldwide between 2002 and 2010.

''Africa must now seize the moment to stop HIV,'' AU Commission Chairperson Alpha Konare said in a news release distributed at a Johannesburg event yesterday, highlighting the pressing need to stop more Africans from becoming infected.

While global attention has focused on bringing HIV treatment, including anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs, to help Africa combat the world's worst AIDS crisis, new HIV infections continue unabated across much of the continent.

In 2005, 3.2 million of the five million new HIV infections recorded globally occurred in sub-Saharan Africa -- a region struggling with some 26 million HIV-positive people and mourning at least 22 million killed by the disease since the 1980s.

The new AU campaign, launched with several U.N. agencies, aims to highlight the need for HIV prevention during 2006 and to coordinate campaigns to educate people to avoid infection.

The initiative follows the failure of the U.N.'s ''3 by 5'' programme which had hoped to put three million people in the developing world on ARVs by the end of 2005.

While officials said progress was made in broadening access to treatment, only about 1.3 million people were receiving the drugs by the end of the target period.

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