Roughly 7,000 people contracted HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS, every day last year, this year's World Disasters Report, published by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies shows.

Speaking at the launch of the Report, the Chairman of the Irish Red Cross, David Andrews said that the global scale of HIV/AIDS meant that it was an issue that must be tackled head-on.

"HIV/AIDS is the disaster that keeps on killing. Day after day, families are destroyed, economies wiped out and communities crushed as economies disintegrate, parents die and children are born with the disease. We must grasp the enormity of a disaster that has already killed 25 million - more than a hundred times the number of people killed by the tsunami, our biggest single natural disaster in living memory," David Andrews told the audience.

And David Andrews also emphasised that what is revealed in the Report should not be read as the problem of any single continent or country.

"We live in a world where 200 million people - more than 40 times the population of our own country are now on the move every year. Many of these people are moving to cities in Africa, Asia and South America to live in unplanned and squalid housing, with little sanitation or other essential infrastructure. As the UN noted just over a year ago, we have passed the "tipping point" from a rural to an urban-living world and this new reality with all of the movement and interaction that it presents must shape a renewed vigour in our HIV/AIDS programmes," David Andrews stated.

Restating the commitment of the Irish Red Cross to best practice in this area, David Andrews said that work in Africa funded by the Irish Red Cross was already aimed at curbing the spread of the HIV/AIDS.

He outlined three key areas of activity, research into the current HIV/AIDS situation on the ground, community care volunteers who look after HIV/AIDS patients in their homes and the introduction of clean and safe water and sanitations facilities serving communities with HIV/AIDS sufferers living in them.

Internationally, attention is drawn in the Report to the fact that HIV is a disaster on many levels. In the most affected countries in sub-Saharan Africa, where prevalence rates reach 20 per cent, development gains are reversed and life expectancy halved.

For marginalized groups across the world - injecting drug users, sex workers and men who have sex with men - rates are on the increase. Yet they often face stigma, criminalization and little, if any, access to prevention and treatment services.

Fighting the stigma of HIV/AIDS is crucial to ensuring a better quality of life for those with the disease and a more effective way of controlling its spread, according to the experts who co-authored the Report.

They looked at:

• Disasters, man-made and \x91natural', disrupt basic services, exacerbate other drivers of the epidemic, and can increase people's vulnerability to HIV infection. People living with HIV are among the groups most vulnerable in disaster and crisis situations. But, at the same time, they have much to offer and their fuller participation is crucial to tackling the epidemic.
• The enormous economic, social and intellectual toll of HIV and AIDS and the vast challenges the epidemic presents to governments, humanitarian organizations and local communities. The Report contends, should not be set aside because other priorities seem to be more important.

"The HIV and AIDS epidemic is a disaster whose scale and extent could have been prevented. Ignorance, stigma, political inaction, indifference and denial all contributed to millions of deaths," explained Lindsay Knight, editor of the World Disasters Report.

"The Report dispels myths about those \x91other' people who spread HIV - refugees, migrants, people escaping from conflict and poverty. We must all do much more to eradicate stigma. It is also important to recognize that addressing HIV requires a longer-term reaction than the usual response to emergencies but that it also provides an opportunity to build resilience and empower communities," she added.

A final chapter deals with the funding of HIV programmes and details possible corrective measures by donor governments and partners.

"We need smart money and not necessarily always more money" asserts Dr Mukesh Kapila, Special Representative of the International Federation, and the co-chair of the Red Cross Red Crescent Global Alliance on HIV.

"The rhetoric of good donorship and good partnership must be fully implemented. Tied aid and earmarked aid which is frequently expensive, short term and ill-adapted to local needs must be reduced further. Funding for HIV needs to be evidence-based and results-driven. It must reach those who need it more quickly and more fully. Doing any less will continue to cost lives".

The World Disasters Report also includes a section on disaster statistics and analysis of global trends, supplied by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), based at the Catholic University of Louvain, in Belgium. Overall, disasters in 2007 were slightly less numerous and far less deadly than in previous years but the total number of people affected by natural disasters, including floods, storms, droughts and geophysical disasters, rose sharply compared to 2006.

405 natural disasters were reported worldwide in 2007, as opposed to 423 in 2006. Although the number of people reported killed (16,679) was the lowest for a decade, the number of people reported affected by such disasters in 2007 rose to 201 million, a 40 per cent increase compared to the previous year.

By contrast, the number and impact of technological disasters, which include industrial, transport and other structural accidents, was the lowest in a decade.

A total of 252 technological disasters were reported; the death toll decreased to 6,488; and the number of people reported affected (47,000) showed a significant decrease of 70 per cent compared to 2006.

The combined total of 23,167 people killed by natural and technological disasters was the lowest of the decade, far below the decade's average of 113,000.

The World Disasters Report 2008: Focus on HIV/AIDS is the latest in the series of annual World Disasters Reports published by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies which delivers insights, analyses and findings each year on a different subject. The Report is available to download as a pdf from www.ifrc.org and as a hard copy for sale from wdr@ifrc.org, priced at CHfr40.00 (Swiss Francs/\x8025.00) plus postage, packaging and excise.