International AIDS Conference Opens in Barcelona

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, July 08, 2002

International AIDS Conference Opens in Barcelona

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The 14th International AIDS Conference opened in Barcelona on the Mediterranean coast on Sunday, aiming at increased global awareness of the threat of the killing epidemic to the economic development, peace and security and mobilized resources to check the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

The biggest AIDS conference in history kicked off in Barcelona with an hour-long opening ceremony attended by 15,000 medical experts, government officials and activists fighting a fast-spreading global crisis.

Welcoming the conference participants, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the gathering "brings together the world's best thinkers on AIDS, the most resolute decision-makers and the most trenchant activists."

"I will do my utmost to ensure that our reply to this epidemic is urgent, comprehensive and determined," he said.

Local actors were to play out a brief drama to drive home the message of the six-day conference, whose theme, "Knowledge and Commitment for Action" typifies grim expectations that the fight against AIDS will be long.

The UN AIDS organization last week estimated that in just over 20 years, 20 million people have died of AIDS, and the disease could reap three times that harvest in the next two decades unlessa major rescue effort is launched in poor countries.

Forty million people have HIV, 70 percent of them in sub-Saharan Africa, but the former Soviet Union and parts of Asia are also big risk areas, it said.

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