Rights violations speeding AIDS along

Human rights violations suffered by HIV-positive people are worsening the global AIDS pandemic, a senior UN official has said. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour said while research highlighted AIDS as one of world's greatest health problems, this did little to publicise the rights problems faced by people living with the HI virus. The Voice of America news agency quoted Arbour as saying: "What the figures, of course, do not reveal is the actual stories; the countless individual stories of the many indignities that are visited upon men and women, whose rights are denied as a result of their HIV status." According to UN estimates nearly 40 million people are living with HIV/AIDS globally, and there were more than three million new infections last year.