Politics still hamper anti-AIDS progress - activists

The Geneva-based International AIDS Society (IAS), said on Wednesday that politics still blocked the implementation of much needed anti-AIDS programmes, even 25 years into the pandemic.

IAS executive director Craig McClure noted that politics had helped decide which organisations or individuals received attention during the early years of the pandemic, and continued to play a major role in these decisions today.

McClure's remarks were made shortly after a new declaration, adopted during the recent UN High Level Meeting on the pandemic, failed to pay adequate attention to marginalised groups.

He told the multimedia broadcasting service, Voice of America, "What was disappointing is that countries still cannot name populations most at risk, like sex workers and injecting drug users, gay men and other men who have sex with men."