“We are still in the middle of a crisis,” Executive Director of UNAIDS Peter Piot told a crowd of about 200 people in Kresge Auditorium last night. “Eight thousand people are dying every single day from AIDS.”

And unless the virus is brought under control, he said, many developing countries can forget about their futures altogether.

In remarks punctuated with statistics, the United Nations’ AIDS tsar gave a sobering perspective on the fight against HIV/AIDS sprinkled with a few encouraging signs for the future.

AIDS, according to estimates he provided, is the fourth leading cause of death in the world, and the first among people ages 15-50. There are 12 million AIDS orphans in Africa alone.

The global health expert argued that the HIV/AIDS epidemic should be included in the same breath as climate change, mass poverty and nuclear war—issues which capture the public’s attention.

“The truth is that after 25, 26 years since AIDS was discovered, the end of this epidemic is nowhere in sight,” he said. “This is not a short-lived phenomenon. We didn’t think in the long run because there was a crisis on our hands. We need young people in the fight against AIDS because it is not going to be over tomorrow.”

Roughly 65 million people have been infected since 1981. The epidemic originated in eastern and southern Africa, but the virus has permeated the globe.

“There are countries in southern Africa where 30 to 40 percent of the adults are HIV-positive,” Piot said. “Just imagine what that would be in California — 10, 20 million people living with HIV.”

Numbers like these are especially devastating in poor countries with failing health systems, Piot said. He also noted that the epidemic is spreading alarmingly quickly in the former Soviet Union and India.

What started as a disease associated with middle-class gay men is now a universal problem. Women are infected five or six times as often as men, according to UN estimates.

HIV/AIDS has a devastating impact on society as well as the humans it afflicts.

“AIDS does to society what HIV does to the human body — it weakens the immune system just as it weakens the resiliency in a society,” he said. “It weakens the ability to cope and to deal with difficult things.”

He added that as an exceptional disease, AIDS requires an exceptional response.

“There is enormous stigma and discrimination attached to the disease, and that’s what makes it so unique,” Piot said. “It’s about sex and drugs; that’s what makes it so difficult to address.”

Piot spoke of a “brilliant alliance” that would combine the efforts of politicians, big business, trade unions and religious institutions to combat the disease. Universities like Stanford, he said, can also have an impact.

Major progress has been made on many fronts, in his view, including decreasing rates of infection and increasing levels of antiretroviral medicine.

“There has been a 40-fold increase [in AIDS funding] in 10 years,” Piot said. “Yet not enough, by 2010 we’ll need $30 billion. The price of inaction in the world is extraordinarily high.”

Piot also touched on the societal effects of the disease.

He said that AIDS benefited the gay rights movement by increasing awareness and added that he expects the same to happen to the international women’s rights movement.

Piot also issued a warning to the audience to be cautious in their lives and to refrain from attaching a stigma to the disease.

“Make sure you don’t become infected,” he said. “Make sure you don’t discriminate against those who are infected, and if you’re infected, do whatever you can to remain healthy and not infect anyone else.”

Jonny Dorsey ‘07, executive director of the non-profit organization FACE AIDS at Stanford, attended the lecture.

“I thought it was a good talk,” he said. “I like how [Piot] admits it’s a big problem and it’s going to take years, but then also focuses on the fact that we really can do huge things.”