THE global battle against HIV/Aids shows no sign of letting up a quarter-century into an epidemic that has claimed 25 million lives, the head of the UN’s HIV/AIDSjoint programme warned yesterday.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern is to hold face-to-face talks with UN secretary general Kofi Annan in New York early next month, it emerged tonight.

BIRD flu poses a major threat to Africa’s fight against its AIDS epidemic, challenging overburdened healthcare systems and stretching economies already hit by the impact of HIV, the UN’s AIDS chief said yesterday.

ALMOST five million people were infected by HIV globally in 2005, the highest jump since the first reported case in 1981 and taking the number living with the virus to a record 40.3 million, the United Nations said yesterday.

The United Nations’ top HIV/Aids official says it is no longer realistic to hope that the world will meet its goal of halting and reversing the spread of the pandemic by 2015.

The global fight against AIDS is falling short and leaders need to act as women bear the brunt of the killer disease, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said yesterday.

AROUND 4.8 million people, the most ever recorded in a single year, became infected with HIV in 2003, a UN agency said as it warned that Eastern Europe and Asia were just behind Africa as the plum targets for AIDS.

THE annual world death rate from Aids would wipe out the Irish population in a year and a half, a senior UN official warned yesterday.

The annual world death rate from AIDS would wipe out the population of Ireland in a year and a half, a senior UN official warned today.

The response from businesses across the world to the growing problem of Aids is “inadequate”, the director of the Global Health Initiative said today.

FORTY million people worldwide are living with HIV/AIDS, including an estimated 2.5 million children under 15 years old.

THE US has announced a $15 billion plan to tackle the global crisis of AIDS and has called on the rest of the world to follow its lead.

A little-known South Korean tuberculosis expert was today elected to head the United Nations health agency.

THE number of people living with HIV/AIDS around the world is now well over 40 million, figures released yesterday reveal.

In another grim report on the evolution of the global Aids pandemic, experts estimated today that the number of children in the developing world orphaned by the disease will increase from 13.4 million today to 25 million in the next eight years.

Junior Minister Liz O’Donnell has announced that Ireland will give an €12.5m to worldwide efforts to stop the spread of Aids.

HIV prevention organisations are to raise the worrying increase of the disease in Ireland with the head of UN-Aids.