UNITED NATIONS, May 21 (Xinhua) -- Both UN Secretary-General and President of the General Assembly on Monday called on the international community to maintain continues comprehensive efforts against HIV/AIDS.

    Addressing the General Assembly, which met Monday on follow-up to the outcome of the twenty-sixth special session: implementation of the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stressed that AIDS would remain a system-wide priority for the United Nations during his term.

    He noted that, despite improvements in ensuring universal access, the number of people living with HIV has increased in every region of the world over the past two years.

    "We cannot win the fight for development if we do not stop the spread of HIV," Ban said, stressing that all four elements of the response -- treatment, prevention, care and support -- were essential and interconnected.

    The UN chief thus called for scaling up prevention programs and making them more accessible, as well as tackling diseases intimately linked to HIV, especially tuberculosis, and addressing gender inequality, stigma and discrimination.

    For his part, he promised that AIDS would remain a system-wide priority for the United Nations, that the Organization would deliver as one on AIDS, and that the already pioneering coordination efforts of the Joint UN Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and its co-sponsors would be strengthened further through system-wide coherence.

    Opening the meeting, the General Assembly President Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalifa said that the response to HIV/AIDS was not a question of either treatment or prevention -- or even what kind of prevention; it was all of them combined.

    "We are all tested by this crisis -- not only in our willingness to respond, but also in the divisions that shape our response," she emphasized.

    The president noted that the world would never be entirely secure, unless the international community tackled poverty, injustice and inequality, and HIV/AIDS was related to all three.

    The meeting will build on the outcome of the high-level meeting on AIDS in New York, 2006, during which members states declared a new global objective to move towards the goal of universal access to HIV prevention programs, treatment, care and support by 2010.

    That commitment was expected to strengthen the 2001 Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS, adopted by the General Assembly at its twenty-sixth special session, entitled "Global Crisis -- Global Action."