Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 10, 1994 TAG: 9408100080
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Boston Globe
DATELINE: YOKOHAMA, JAPAN LENGTH: Short
Jonathan M. Mann, a professor of public health at Harvard University who was the first director of the World Health Organization's AIDS program, said AIDS-prevention programs are losing strength and credibility and can do little to prevent the epidemic from spreading to vulnerable countries.
``The gap between the expanding pandemic and the global response is growing, rapidly and dangerously,'' Mann told participants at the 10th International AIDS Conference.
``Pilot projects are not being sustained; the lessons learned from past global experience are being ignored; community and political commitment to AIDS is plateauing or even declining.
``It is now evident to all that while the first global AIDS strategy - and all our work based upon it - was courageous, extremely important and necessary, it is also manifestly insufficient to bring the pandemic under control.''
The strategy, formally drafted through WHO and subscribed to by scores of countries, aims to provide education about the disease to people who are ignorant of it, targets health services at high-risk groups, and discourages discrimination against sufferers so they will not infect others in the course of trying to keep their illness secret.
by CNB