The Seventh International Conference on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP), which opened in Kobe on Friday, comes at a time when the HIV/AIDS epidemic is spreading rapidly from Africa to Asia. The message is loud and clear: Without stepped-up efforts to combat the crisis, it could reach serious proportions comparable to that of Africa.
Attending the five-day meeting are about 3,000 people, including researchers, people infected with HIV and AIDS patients, members of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and officials from administrative agencies. The main purpose of the forum is to share knowledge and experiences regarding treatment and prevention methods.
"Asia and the Pacific are now home to a rapidly expanding HIV and AIDS epidemic," Peter Piot, executive director of the Joint U.N. Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), said. "Last year a total of 8.2 million people in Asia were HIV positive."