German Chancellor Angela Merkel called on the international community Monday to take more effective measures to combat the spread of AIDS, according to dpa. The struggle against the disease was "a task for all of mankind" and should not be treated as a problem for individual nations," she told an AIDS conference attended by EU health ministers in Bremen. Merkel said Germany would see to it that the fight against AIDS is on the summit agendas of the EU and Group of Eight leading industrial nations in June. Germany is current president of the EU and G8. Opening the two-day meeting, German Health Minister Ulla Schmidt called on the European Union to do more to rein in the disease. The goal, she said, should be to have better preventive measures and affordable treatment across Europe. "The HIV virus doesn't stop at borders," Schmidt said. "High rates of infection in one country have a knock-on effect in neighbouring states." Noting that there was no cure for AIDS, she said was important to concentrate efforts on ways to prevent people becoming infected with the disease. German Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul called AIDS a "global disaster" and said the only way to beat the disease was for everybody to work together. Both ministers called for closer cooperation among aid organizations working with the disease, which has affected around 40 million people around the world, 25 million of them in sub-Saharan Africa. There are around 56,000 infected with the AIDS virus in Germany where there were 2,700 new infections last year, 200 more than in 2005. Also taking part in the Bremen conference are Peter Piot, director of the UN specialized agency UNAIDS, as well as health experts and representatives of non-governmental organizations.
