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UN envoy warns of HIV/AIDS rage
Caroline Hooper-Box. Sunday Independent, 12 January 2003. Republished courtesy of Independent Newspapers (Pty) Ltd.
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The United Nations Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa has warned of "a crescendo of rage and desperation which governments will ignore at their peril" in a hard-hitting new report on the spread of the pandemic on the continent.
Stephen Lewis, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's Special Envoy, has accused world governments of "mass murder by complacenecy" for neglecting the food and HIV/AIDS crisis in southern Africa, warning of the "failure" of southern African states "10 or 15 years down the road".
Among the recommendations that Lewis made regarding the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the hunger that is talking Africa are that anti-retroviral programmes be supported by governments, that southern African governments do all they can to get food to their people, that the international community finds the political will and money to deal with the pandemic and the food shortages, and that the vulnerability of women and children in the region become a priority.
Lewis, a former Canadian ambassador to the UN, this week delivered his hard-hitting report in New York after a tour of Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia last month. He is to begin a follow-up tour in the "absolutely impoverished" Lesotho in 10 days' time, along with James Morris, head of the World Food Programme, to examine the link between hunger and AIDS in the region. The UN tour takes place in the same week that the Health Forum of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) meets in Pretoria. The meeting has already run into controversy.
HIV/AIDS activists and scientists reacted with horror this week at the news that Dr Roberto Giraldo, a well-known HIV/AIDS dissident who denies a link between HIV and AIDS, has been invited by the SADC health sector to speak on AIDS therapy and treatment at the Forum. Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, the Health Minister, chairs the sector. The US-based Giraldo, a member of President Thabo Mbkei's controversial AIDS Advisory Panel, argues that those who promote the use of condoms and clean needles do so for their own financial gain.
Lewis, in an interview with the Sunday Independent, hit out at the dissident view, saying: "The UN repudiates any proposition claiming that HIV does not cause AIDS and that heterosexual transmission is not part of the spread of the disease. The UN simply gives these views no credibility whatsoever." He said he expected the SADC meeting to focus on the link between the famine and HIV/AIDS, and "I would think one of the things raised would be a call to deal with the question of anti-retroviral treatment."
"Zambia has announced it will put 10 000 people on treatment. Mozambique is looking at putting 50 000 people on anti-retrovirals through the private sector. Zimbabwe and Lesotho are both looking at anti-retroviral treatment, and Namibia has started treatment. Botswana brings a lot of experience to the SADC meeting."
Lewis said Tshabalala-Msimang would have to examine the costs and numbers involved in implementing anti-retroviral programmes. "Everyone hopes South Africa will be able to provide anti-retrovirals at the earliest possible opportunity - because of the leadership position South Africa invariably and inevitably has."
According to the UN and aid organisations, more than 14 million people are threatened with starvation over the next six months as a result of food shortages brought about by adverse weather conditions and poor government planning. "There is absolutely no doubt that hunger and HIV/AIDS have come together in a Hecate's brew of horror. You can't till the soil, grow crops or feed the family when disease stalks the land," said Lewis in his briefing at UN headquarters in New York on 8 January 2003.
He said he had seen on his southern African tour "a crescendo of rage and desperation which governments will ingore at their peril ... This pandemic cannot be allowed to continue, and those who watch it unfold with a kind of pathological equanimity must be held to account," he said. "There may yet come a day when we have peactime tribunals to deal with this particular version of crimes against humanity."
The 15 to 35 per cent HIV prevalence rate in the region, and the "incessant ... cumulative death of so many productive members of society, means, ultimately, that things fall apart," he said. But there is "no question" that the HIV/AIDS pandemic can be defeated "with a joint and Herculean effort between the African countries and the international community."
But the Global Fund, set up in 2001 to give assistance to countries in need of money for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programmes, will be in a critical situation next month. "If the United States, and the other members of the G7 don't augment their contributions to the Global Fund in the immediate future, we will be in desperate trouble."
Lewis said he was worried that war with Iraq would "eclipse every other international human priority, HIV/AIDS included."
To download the full Report by Stephen Lewis in either MSWord or Adoba Reader format, click on the links in the righthand column |
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