Geneva - The number of people affected by natural disasters rose sharply last year to 201 million, 40 per cent more than 2006, though the number of fatalities was the lowest in a decade, the Red Cross said Thursday.
There were 405 significant natural disasters in 2007, down from 423 the year before, according to the annual World Disasters Report published by the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
However, HIV/AIDS was placed at the centre of the report, the first time that the Red Cross had focused on one condition.
HIV/AIDS had claimed 25 million lives since 1981 and 2.1 million deaths in 2007 alone, the Red Cross said. Seven thousand people contract HIV every day, according to UNAIDS figures.
"For sub-Saharan African societies that are torn apart by HIV, and for numerous marginalized groups worldwide, who are left to cope with death, disease and destitution, HIV is undoubtedly a disaster," said International Federation Secretary General Markku Niskala.
Although global prevalence rates had apparently levelled since 2001, rates were on the increase in Indonesia, Vietnam and parts of Central Asia and Eastern Europe.
In some countries, the health care workforce had been hard hit. In Botswana, an estimated 17 per cent of health workers had been lost to AIDS.
In South Africa, a study found that 21 per cent of teachers aged 25 to 34 were living with HIV.
"The humanitarian community must rise to the challenge of HIV," said Niskala.
The organization said the disease must receive much higher priority in disaster management programmes by humanitarian organizations and governments.
AIDS was the third major cause of death in middle-income countries and the major cause in sub-Saharan Africa.
Funding for AIDS needs to be targeted, the report said.
"Funding for HIV needs to be evidence-based and results driven. It must reach those who need it more quickly and more fully," said the Red Cross representative on HIV Mukesh Kapila. "Doing any less will continue to cost lives." (dpa)
