Two million Africans die of AIDS

While 200,000 people died last year in Africa as a result of conflicts and natural disasters, two million died of AIDS, Peter Piot, Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UN-AIDS), said on Wednesday. In a news conference at UN headquarters in New York on the occasion of World AIDS Day, he said AIDS was the most deadly undeclared war and a challenge to the international community. Some 50 million people are infected with HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS. Of these some 16 million had died, UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Harry Belafonte said on the same occasion. Also, speaking at the venue were the Regional Director of Eastern and Southern Africa of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Urban Johnson, and the chief executive officer and president of the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS, Deborah Fraser Hauz. Piot said commemoration of the occasion was to remember all those who had died of AIDS and to "re-energize" the battle against the disease.