The threat to humankind posed by AIDS was so severe that what was at stake was "nothing less than the very survival of entire countries, the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef), Ms Carol Bellamy, declared at the international AIDS conference yesterday.
Ms Bellamy, who called for a "war of liberation" against the plague, warned that the pandemic was imperiling fulfilment of the Convention on the Rights of Children. "It means mobilising every available resource," she said. "It means sparing no effort and brooking no diversions until all of society is liberated. What is required is the largest mobilisation of resources in history."
Every minute six people under the age of 24 were infected with HIV, she said. The risk of being infected was compounded because many young people in the worst affected countries did not know they were at risk, she added.
In sub-Saharan Africa, where the devastation wrought by the disease is worst, half the girls between the ages of 15 and 19 did not know that a man who looks healthy could be infected with HIV and infect them.
The annual Unicef Progress of Nations report said of the situation in southern Africa: "The HIV infection rates among young people are a searing indictment, documenting failures of vision, commitment and action of almost unimaginable proportions."
It referred to "leadership unworthy of the name" and the "virtual abandonment" of the subcontinent to "a disaster which may soon engulf other regions".
In direct contrast to President Thabo Mbeki's opening address to the conference, Ms Bellamy warned that the threat posed by AIDS overshadowed the dangers emanating from bad sanitation, collapsing education systems - an estimated 86,000 children lost their teachers to AIDS last year - and malnutrition.
Mr Mbeki identified poverty as the greatest killer and cause of suffering.
A similar assessment to Ms Bellamy's was offered by Mr Bongani Khumali, who heads South Africa's national HIV-AIDS programme.
"We are in a state of war," he said of the AIDS threat. "We can't go on as if it's business as usual.
"We must find ways of changing behaviour. We must find a vaccine for AIDS and a cure for AIDS."