Yearbook of the United Nations, 2002. Part 3, Economic and social questions. Chapter 13, Health, food and nutrition

Abstract

In 2002, the United Nations continued to promote human health, coordinate food aid and food security and support research in nutrition. At the end of 2002, about 42 million people were living with HIV/AIDS. During the year, an estimated 5 million people became infected, 800,000 of them children, and 3.1 million people died from AIDS. The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) continued to coordinate UN activities for AIDS prevention and control, including monitoring the implementation of the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/ AIDS, adopted at the twenty-sixth (2001) special session of the General Assembly. In order to ensure the Declaration's full implementation, the UNAIDS secretariat and co-sponsors agreed to a series of actions in the key areas of advocacy, normative guidance and operations support, communications and public information, and civil society engagement. Efforts also continued towards meeting the Millennium Development Goal of halting and beginning to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was established in January. The Roll Back Malaria initiative, launched by the World Health Organization in 1998 with the goal of halving the world's malaria burden by 2010, was seeking to expand the use of interventions known to be effective and support work that would result in even more effective interventions in future. In support of the Decade to Roll Back Malaria in Developing Countries, Particularly in Africa, 2001-2010, the General Assembly set targets to be met by 2005 for the treatment and prevention of the disease. The World Food Programme a joint undertaking of the United Nations and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)—assisted 72 million people, providing 3.7 million tons of food aid. As a follow-up to the 1996 World Food Summit, FAO convened the World Food Summit: five years later, which adopted a declaration calling on the international community to fulfill the pledge made at the 1996 Summit to halve the number of hungry to about 400 million by 2015. In December, the General Assembly declared 2004 the International Year of Rice.