China to become next country to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of AIDS

GENEVA - UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibe on Friday said China's performance in the field of AIDS prevention and treatment had been one of the best in the world, adding that China was expected to become the next country to completely wipe out mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of the disease.

Sidibe on Friday signed here with Xinhua News Agency President Cai Mingzhao a new strategic cooperation memorandum, the two sides pledging to strengthen cooperation in areas such as social media so as to jointly contribute to the fight against AIDS.

China's crucial role in prevention and treatment innovations was particularly lauded by the UNAIDS head who believed that China would become the organization's most important partner in the next 15 years, contributing even more to the global goal of ending the AIDS pandemic.

He also said China was currently running the world's largest methadone addicts intervention among drug users.

In the past few years, HIV prevalence in intravenous drug users in China has dropped by 90 percent.

Cai reminded that UNAIDS was one of the first UN agencies to establish a strategic cooperation with Xinhua.

Since the two sides signed the first memorandum of strategic cooperation in 2011, both organizations had conducted fruitful cooperation initiatives, he said, adding that the new agreement signed today had built on the initial partnership and added new content as well as a defined format of cooperation in view of working together towards ending AIDS by 2030.

Cai said Xinhua, as China's state news agency, was willing to use to its advantage all media forms to cooperate with UNAIDS to fight for dignity and human health.

According to the latest report of the Geneva-based organization, some 30 million people around the world had avoided new HIV infections while AIDS-related deaths had decreased by nearly 800 million.

The UN agency said if this trend continued, the 2030 target to eliminate AIDS would be reached.

The UN General Assembly will convene a high-level meeting on HIV-AIDS from June 8 to 10 at the UN headquarters in New York so as to review the progress achieved in realizing the 2001 Declaration of Commitment on HIV-AIDS and the 2006 and 2011 Political Declarations on HIV/AIDS.