French first lady makes AIDS appeal

1 Dec 2009, 6:15 am   -   Source: AAP
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French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy has called for greater efforts to beat mother-to-child HIV transmission by 2015. (AAP)

French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy has called for greater efforts to beat mother-to-child HIV transmission by 2015. (AAP)

French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy has called for greater efforts to beat mother-to-child HIV transmission by 2015.

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French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, who has lent her star power to the global campaign against AIDS, has called for greater efforts to beat mother-to-child HIV transmission by 2015.

On the eve of World AIDS Day, the singer and ex-supermodel wife of President Nicolas Sarkozy has written in Le Monde daily that preventing newborns from contracting HIV from their mothers in poor countries is a matter of justice.

"I am not a doctor, or a scholar, or a politician. I am just a woman troubled by the injustice of a world that has the knowledge and the medicine needed to prevent HIV transmission and death from AIDS," she wrote on Monday.

The 41-year-old first lady said 430,000 babies were born with HIV in 2008 in the world's poorest countries while such transmission is virtually non-existent in Europe and North America.

Most of the newborns will die a premature and painful death, wrote Bruni-Sarkozy, who last year became an ambassador for the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

The first lady reiterated her call for eradicating mother-to-child HIV transmission by 2015 in line with objectives set by the UN AIDS agency.

"What I hope for is that one day we can tell our grandchildren that we did everything we could, everywhere in the world, so that children no longer are born as carriers of HIV," she added.

Bruni-Sarkozy said 45 per cent of pregnant women living with HIV were treated last year but this percentage could rise to 60 per cent through the work of the global fund.

The first lady, who lost her brother Virginio to AIDS three years ago, has said she hopes to use her celebrity status to help women and children living with HIV.

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