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Tuesday is World AIDS Day

30 November 2009 12:09 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Started on 1st December 1988, World AIDS Day is about, increasing awareness, fund mobilization, fighting prejudice and improving education, said the United Nations Department of Public Information in a statement.

The World AIDS Day theme for 2009 is ’Universal Access and Human Rights’. World AIDS Day is important in reminding people that HIV has not gone away, and that there are many things still to be done.

The protection of human rights is fundamental to combating the global HIV and AIDS epidemic. Violations against human rights fuel the spread of HIV, putting marginalized groups at a higher risk of HIV infection.

Within World AIDS Day the UN agencies in the country, namely World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) together with Government and Non-government organizations of Azerbaijan is supporting advocacy events to ensure that human rights are protected and global targets for HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care are met.

The World AIDS Campaign advocates for the fulfillment of the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS adopted by 189 Governments including Azerbaijan in 2001 at the UN General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS and subsequent policy commitments on AIDS under the banner "Stop AIDS. Keep the Promiseâ€. It needs also to remember that during MDG Summit HIV was marked as an indicator of measuring the progress in achieving the countries development goals.

UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS,

The mission of UNAIDS is stop and reverse the spread of HIV and scale up towards universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support services. UNAIDS to brings together in the HIV/AIDS response the efforts and resources of UN system organizations. UNAIDS helps mount and support an expanded response to AIDS and is one that engages the efforts of many sectors and partners from government and civil society.

Headquarters is led by Executive Director Michele SidibÃ© operating at Geneva. UNAIDS Secretariat works on the ground in more than 80 countries and UNAIDS office is already operating in Azerbaijan.UN HIV Response Program in Azerbaijan is coordinating by UN Joint Team on HIV and chaired by UNAIDS. UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS is an innovative joint venture of the United Nations family, organizations in the AIDS response to help the world prevent new HIV infections, care for people living with HIV, and mitigate the impact of the epidemic.

Azerbaijan is a low HIV prevalent country with injecting drug use as the main mode of transmission following by sexual way. Existing stigma and discrimination of right the PLHW and most at risk groups is blocking effective responses to AIDS. To address the gaps in HIV response UNAIDS (Cosponsor and Secretariat ) will bring together the efforts and resources to work in selected country priority areas like the following: protecting drug users from becoming infected with HIV, reducing sexual transmission of HIV, ensuring people living with HIV receive treatment and removing stigma and discrimination, while continuing working on empowerment of young people to protect themselves from HIV, preventing mother to child transmission and preventing people living with HIV from dying of tuberculosis during next year.