October 15, 2009. At a conference in Rome about the global fight against HIV/AIDS one very important demographic took center stage: children.
It was organized by the U.S. embassy to the Holy See and Caritas Internationalis to promote the effectiveness of partnerships between NGO’s and governmental institutions in tending to children infected with HIV/AIDS an TB all over the world.
Miguel Diaz
U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See
“The more that we can engage in those partnerships the more that we can engage the local communities for a more effective distribution of resources, the more we are able to achieve the noble goal of prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS with respect to children.”
U.S. ambassador Miguel Diaz was among the panelists at the conference who spoke about the importance of the partnership between the U.S. and the Church in dealing with the complex reality of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Miguel Diaz
U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See
“The US government provides, it’s the world’s largest provider of aid, and the Church in turn is the world’s greatest distributor of aid to populations in all parts of the world and sometimes to populations that are in the farthest reaches areas of the world.”
Leslie Ann-Knight, the secretary general of Caritas Internationalis was also present, and said saving lives on the AIDS front was about individual lives and not statistics.
About 80% of people treated for AIDS live in Africa, and about 15% of new HIV victims are children. More than 2 million children are affected with HIV.
RS
