Press Release 00/37 HIV/AIDS EPIDEMIC IS SHIFTING FROM CITIES TO
RURAL AREAS - NEW FOCUS ON AGRICULTURAL POLICY NEEDED
Rome/Geneva, 22 June - The fight against the HIV/AIDS pandemic
in developing countries has been mostly perceived as an "urban
problem", but the absolute numbers of people living with HIV are
actually increasing rapidly in many rural areas, the UN Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Joint United Nations
Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) said today. In some countries,
the gap in HIV infection rates between urban and rural areas is
narrowing. But so many people in developing countries live in
rural areas that, in terms of absolute numbers, the numbers of
rural inhabitants who are infected are very high. In a new
publication entitled Sustainable Agricultural/Rural Development
and Vulnerability to the AIDS Epidemic FAO/UNAIDS called upon
governments to pay more attention to the real burden of HIV/AIDS
on local communities and to ensure that rural development also
aims at combating the epi