The United Nations warned Thursday there were "no excuses" for failure in the fight against AIDS and urged nations across the world to keep promises made in support of anti-AIDS efforts, reported Deutsche Presse Agentur (dpa). In a message to mark World AIDS Day, the Executive Director of the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) Peter Piot called on the world to "recognize the exceptional global threat posed by AIDS and embrace an equally exceptional response". While some countries were making progress in the fight against AIDS, the epidemic was still growing, Piot said in a statement at the UNAIDS headquarters in Geneva. A total of 40.3 million people were now infected with the disease, half of them women, he said. "Effective comprehensive prevention treatment and care programmes need to be scaled up on a massive scale," he said, adding, "With a crisis as unprecedented as AIDS we cannot afford to neglect any vital front." Key issues were the development of prevention measures controlled by women, new treatments and a vaccine against HIV, but social problems underlying the epidemic such as gender and income inequalities also had to be addressed. Politicians, non-governmental organisations and activists were marking the day worldwide with messages to step up the fight against the disease. --More 2340 Local Time 2040 GMT
