RIYADH, 30 September 2005 — Educating teenagers is the best way to contain HIV/AIDS in this part of the world where prevalence is still relatively low, said UNDP’s program coordinator Mayssam Tamim at a workshop held here yesterday.
The workshop, organized by the local chapter of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in cooperation with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO), is the first of its kind to be held in the Kingdom. It aims at creating awareness about HIV/AIDS among teenagers.
“This is a battle we must win,” said Tamim adding that the workshop titled “Awareness Day” is the first of a series of sessions that UNDP plans to hold.
The workshop started with a brief presentation illustrating some facts about AIDS followed by activities that aim to raise the level of awareness among this age group. “Since HIV/AIDS strikes people in the midst of their most economic productive years (15 — 40), it is crucial to address this issue,” said Tamim.
The UN, she said, had organized the “Awareness Day” for teenagers to acquaint them with the threats posed by HIV/AIDS and also to inform them about the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the Arab World, its transmission and prevention methods and other related issues.
The move to hold this event is significant keeping in view the fact that Saudi Arabia has reported some 9,000 HIV/AIDS cases until early this year.
“There has been an annual increase of 10 percent in the number of Saudis afflicted with the disease,” said a report released recently by the Saudi Ministry of Health here. Among expatriates, the rate of increase is 7.8 percent, said the report.
Referring to the measures taken to check the spread of AIDS, a UNDP statement said that “halting HIV/AIDS is the sixth UN’s Millennium Development Goal that has to be achieved by 2015 as part of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).”
In September 2000 at the UN Millennium Summit, 149 heads of state and representatives of government from some 180 countries including the Kingdom adopted the UN’s ‘Millennium Declaration’.
In this declaration, an augmented set of targets with corresponding indicators were agreed upon and this is known as the Declaration of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). By the year 2015, all 191 UN member states have pledged to meet these goals.
