[e-drug] African Leaders Speak at UN Summit on AIDS

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E-DRUG: African Leaders Speak at UN Summit on AIDS
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[from a plethora of UNGASS reports, this one on the voice
of African leaders. Copied as fair use. Crossposted from
AF-AIDS with thanks. NN]

Associated Press - Monday, June 25, 2001
Dafna Linzer, Associated Press Writer
http://www.aegis.org/news/ap/2001/AP010666.html

UNITED NATIONS -- One after another, African leaders at the United
Nations' first global gathering on HIV/AIDS made emotional pleas for
help Monday in ending the devastation wrought by the epidemic.
Nigeria's president warned that entire populations face extinction.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan, seeking $7-10 billion for a global AIDS
fund, said AIDS spending "in the developing world needs to rise to
roughly five times its present level." The Americans pledged to
provide more aid, but did not say how much.

Annan, a native of Ghana who has made the fight against AIDS his
personal priority, opened the three-day special session by urging
world leaders to set aside moral judgments and face the unpleasant
facts of a disease that has killed 22 million people and ravaged many
of the world's poorest nations.

Kenya and Nigeria are each home to more than 2 million HIV patients.
In Botswana, more than 20 percent of the adult population is infected,
and in South Africa, AIDS will knock off 17 years of life expectancy
by 2005.

"The future of our continent is bleak, to say the least," Nigerian
President Olusegun Obasanjo said. "The prospect of extinction of the
entire population of a continent looms larger and larger."

Obasanjo and others called for "total cancellation of Africa's debt,"
which takes badly needed money away from health and social programs
including the fight against AIDS.

"The undeniable fact is that with the fragility of our economies,we
simply lack the capacity to adequately respond to the magnitude of the
HIV/AIDS epidemic," the Nigerian leader said.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, leading the U.S. delegation, said
more money would come from the United States - which has already
pledged $200 million in seed money - "as we learn where our support
will be most effective."

"Our response to AIDS must be no less comprehensive, no less
relentless, no less swift than the pandemic itself," Powell told the
General Assembly.

Several speakers, including Powell, acknowledged that the global
response to AIDS has been woefully late. Britain's Clare Short,
secretary for international development, went a step further by
criticizing the very gathering she addressed.

"We waste too much time and energy in U.N. conferences and special
sessions. We use up enormous energy in arguing at greatlength over
texts that provide few if any follow-up mechanisms or assurances that
governments and U.N. agencies will carry forward the declarations that
are agreed," she said.

Indeed, the Monday morning session ended in more than two hours of
arguments over whether to exclude the U.S.-based International Gay and
Lesbian Human Rights Commission from the conference. Eleven
unidentified countries wanted to keep the group out, but Canada led a
successful vote in the assembly to include it.

Elsewhere in the building, diplomats squabbled over a final conference
document that will map out a global strategy to halt the disease and
reverse its effects. Muslim countries and the United States object to
language that specifically names vulnerable groups in need of
protection, including men who have sex with men.

Noting the weeks of infighting among delegates leading up the
gathering, Annan told the 189-nation General Assembly: "We cannot deal
with AIDS by making moral judgments or refusing to face unpleasant
facts, and still less by stigmatizing those who are infected. We can
only do it by speaking clearly and plainly, both about the ways that
people become infected, and about what they can to avoid infection."

But expectations for a successful gathering remained high and varied
for many of the 3,000 participants, including health experts,
politicians, scientists, AIDS activists and patients working to find
an end to the scourge.

Three days of conferences and meetings touch on everything from drug
prices to homosexuality, AIDS orphans and funding.

To allow some delegates to participate, the United States waived visa
restrictions that prevent those with HIV or AIDS from visiting the
country.

U.N. radio and an online Webcast will broadcast many of the events
around the world in the six official languages of the United Nations -
Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.

Two dozen heads of state, mostly from Africa, are attending the
General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS, though no wealthy nation
sent a president or prime minister.

"It is important for the fund to have criteria that will ensure that
resources are used to meet the needs of countries most affected by
HIV/AIDS such as my own," President Festus Mogae of Botswana said.

Uganda, a rare success story among African nations battling the
disease, became the first developing nation to give to a global AIDS
fund Monday with a $2 million donation. Rates of infection in Uganda
have declined by two-thirds since 1993.

Canada added its contribution to those made earlier by the United
States, Britain and France, for a total of some $600 million so far.

Pfizer's chairman, president and CEO said that the $7-10 billion goal
was overly ambitious. U.S. delegate Henry McKinnell said that even if
that amount could be raised, the infrastructure does not exist to put
it to work.

A study published Friday in the journal Science said the world's
poorest countries will need $9.2 billion a year to deal with AIDS -
$4.4 billion to treat people with the illness and $4.8 billion to
prevent new infections.

On the Net:
www.unaids.org
www.un.org/ga/aids/coverage
www.hdnet.org (Break-the-silence Forum: reports from NGO reps on-site)

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