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“Rock in Rio Lisbon – For a better World Forum” We are certainly in the right place today to talk about HIV and AIDS, because HIV/AIDS is a normal sexual transmitted desease and sex is an issue expecially for young people.
We need to start by personalising the risk and the impact of AIDS. AIDS is not someone else’s issue, it is my issue and it is your issue. Africa may be the hardest hit continent at the moment, but in this globalised world what happens to our brothers and sisters on another continent of the same Global Village also affects our world close to home. SARS made the world see just how interconnected we are. There is no way forward but to care for each other. That means first of all 3  A new way of thinking about access to treatment. Just a
few years ago it seemed acceptable to most of the world that only the affluent - a small percentage of the world’s population – had access to treatment. Drug companies catered to that market, and this was considered “normal”. It is totally unacceptable that most people have no access to treatment, while drug companies make record profits. The 90% of available resources are spent for the 10% of affected people, while the 90% of people in need has only the 10% of resources. And this is a sentence to death for millions of people. Our world deserves a better and more humane system than that. These days the idea has taken hold that everyone should have access to treatment. We must do all we can to make sure this idea becomes well established, and a reality. Countries need to cherish the capacity the TRIPS agreement has given them to protect the public health, and not sign this away in free trade agreements.
You all know the close relashionship among intravenous drug use and the spread of HIV. It is in everibody interest:  A humane approach to drug users. Drug users who cannot
stop with their addiction need real alternatives like methadone. Yet this treatment is still illegal in some countries. Brutality through “war” on drug users is no substitute for care. The violent approach to drugs has been tried since 1909, and it has failed. In many parts of the world the fight against drugs has become the fight against drug users. Politicians exploit the communities’ fear about drug users – as my Australian friend Alex Wodak, President, International Harm Reduction Association said recently in Melbourne: “prohibitionist policies are political viagra for politicians with fading electoral potency”. The humanitarian of the world have to say, “enough”.
We must ask for new strategy based on scientific evidence and  The evidence that harm reduction works has to be
followed, which means opening needle and syringe
exchanges, and substitutive therapies for all in need and not just a few . This saves not only those who would share needles from transmission of HIV, but also prevents the epidemic taking hold in the broader population. Drug users are not an epidemiologically closed group, but they are open to many people through sexual activity. If we prevent a drug user to become HIV positive, we prevent many others to be infected. Leaders who fail to explain to the community why such programmes make sense are just not doing their job. We as humanitarians need to call them to account for this failure  Being frank about sexuality. Some leaders irresponsibly
oppose condom use, and some even spread falsehoods about the effectiveness of condoms. Surely we all agree, and in any case I agree, that abstinence is the best way to prevent a sexual transmitted disease !. But people have sex! The point is: are we able to effectively protect our health and care for each other? As the Swedish government said at the recent World Health Assembly, “we need to avoid digging ourselves further into our moral trenches”. Young people need adults who are not afraid of the facts of life, so that life can be lived In partnership with the Global Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS, the Red Cross Red Crescent has a global anti-stigma campaign, with the signature line “The truth about AIDS. Pass it on….”. This sums up what I am saying here. Rather than tolerate myths and hatred, let’s face the facts and act on them with robust humanitarian spirit. “Pass it on…” is the Red Cross Red Crescent way of saying “talk with others, especially the marginalised and excluded, the most vulnerable people, and mobilise your community to action”. We can act on what we hear today. As Josephine Chiturumani, a woman living with HIV from Zimbabwe Red Cross has said, “That power of humanity we have, let’s use it!”. Red Cross and Red Crescent International Mouvement calls personally each of you to action.

Source: http://www.massimobarra.it/discorsi/2004/Lisbona_ing.pdf