Geneva, 30 March 2005 -- A recent advertising campaign is touting the benefits of vitamin therapy above antiretroviral therapy and claiming that antiretroviral therapy is toxic. These advertisements are wrong and misleading, said the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) today.

Leaders from Norway, UK, Sweden, UNAIDS and the World Bank today praised Mozambique’s efforts to fight AIDS, but called for greater donor coordination and continued leadership from the government to strengthen the national AIDS response.

Today UNAIDS and the governments of the United Kingdom, France the United States will co-host a meeting in London to ensure countries can reverse the spread and impact of AIDS. Entitled ’Making the Money Work’ the meeting will also focus on greater coordination among partners and ensuring money is available and reaches those in the most need quickly and efficiently.

On International Women’s Day, we celebrate women – their strength, their capacity for caring and compassion and the range of achievements they have made in their public, professional, and private lives. It is also a day on which we reflect on some of the difficulties women face in their daily lives – even on Women’s Day.

By 2025, Africa and the world could face three very different scenarios for AIDS. And depending on the actions taken today, up to 43 million HIV infections could be averted over the next 20 years.

The Steering Committee of the Asia Pacific Leadership Forum on HIV/AIDS and Development (APLF) met last week to discuss ways in which both political and civil society leadership can be supported and strengthened in the region to reduce the spread of AIDS.

UNAIDS, UNICEF and Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF) today expressed strong concern about the South African Medicine Control Council’s decision to discontinue use of single-dose nevirapine for prevention of mother to child transmission.

As new developments in the search for an HIV vaccine take place, vaccine researchers from around the world are joining forces to accelerate progress towards an effective and safe HIV vaccine, with the full and equal involvement of countries most affected by the AIDS epidemic.

Since this is my first press briefing of 2005, I feel compelled to begin with brief reference to the Tsunami, the Millennium Development Goals, the debt of African countries and “3 by 5”, the WHO/UNAIDS initiative to put three million people with full-blown AIDS into treatment by the end of 2005. Collectively, they form a backdrop for what I wish to say about the country visits to Malawi and Tanzania.

As the tsunami relief efforts in devastated areas across the Indian Ocean shift towards long-term strategies, it is essential to sustain HIV prevention and care efforts, said Mr Prasada Rao, Director of the Regional Support Team of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) in Asia today.