Think Tank Calls for UNAIDS to be Scrapped

LONDON – The UN’s specialised AIDS agency, UNAIDS, has today released new statistics showing that the HIV/AIDS pandemic peaked in the mid-1990s and prevalence is generally declining. Philip Stevens, a global health policy analyst at International Policy Network, says the figures call into question current priorities for spending on the diseases of poverty.

“For years, UNAIDS claimed that it was only a matter of time until the world would succumb to an explosive HIV/AIDS pandemic. Today’s figures show that this pandemic simply hasn’t materialised – and won’t,” said Stevens.

Stevens lamented the agency’s exaggeration tactics, which have had the effect of diverting vast resources towards a phantom pandemic – and away from real diseases. He said, “Eight countries in Sub-Saharan Africa really do suffer a severe AIDS crisis. Yet UNAIDS and a cohort of global activists continually overstated the scale of the problem globally. Tragically, funds were diverted away from diseases that take a far greater toll on the world’s poorest people. Although pneumonia and diarrhoea kill many more each year, these diseases receive only a tiny fraction of resources now devoted to HIV/AIDS, which grabs a quarter of all global health spending.”

Stevens said that the agency should be terminated: “UNAIDS has wasted billions of dollars on politically-correct programmes. Meanwhile millions of people have died of readily preventable or treatable diseases. This is grotesque. UNAIDS should be disbanded immediately, its data collection responsibilities handed back to the World Health Organization, and the rest of its responsibilities scrapped.”

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