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Regional HIV Conference to address HIV/AIDS issues in sub-Saharan Africa
Metropolitan media release. Published in the Mail & Guardian, 17 to 23 October 2003.
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More than 100 international delegates are expected to meet at a Conference in Maputo, Mozambique in November (3rd to 5th) to discuss what can be done in sub-Saharan Africa to address the impact of HIV/AIDS on the region.
According to reports by the UN, over 30 million people in the region are either infected with HIV or dying from AIDS-related illnesses. Delegates at the Conference, sponsored by financial services company Metropolitan, will put forward ideas on what can be done differently to bolster efforts to manage the HIV/AIDS pandemic and its social and economic repercussions. Speakers addressing the Conference will include Mozambique President Chissano, Metropolitan AIDS strategist Stephen Kramer, and Dr Diogo Milagre from the Mozambique National AIDS Council.
Stephen Kramer said the company is hosting this three-day Conference because deeper thinking is needed on key issues, especially food security and contextualising HIV interventions. "Corporates, NGOs and governments are still faced with challenges with regard to implementing holistic programmes that offer prevention as well as treatment for people infected with and affected by HIV - at the same time, we now face the repercussions of productive people becoming sick and dying. Social issues such as the burden of disease, high levels of mortality and sickness among breadwinners, orphans, poverty and unemployment are now not just effects of the epidemic, but may soon exacerbate it. It is forums like these that help these institutions to pursue and find solutions to better confront a challenge as mammoth as the AIDS pandemic."
Metropolitan hosted its first AIDS Conference last year in Botswana, which was attended by over 120 delegates. "At last year's Conference, delegates left with a better practical understanding of the scale and depth of the problem in selected countries in sub-Saharan Africa and what communities, companies and government departments in these countries are actually doing to manage AIDS, even in settings where resources are scarce," said Kramer.
He stated that although governments in many African countries have pledged war on the pandemic, thousands of people are still dying from the disease because of lack of access to healthy nutrition, clean water and affordable drugs. He added that there was room for the private sector to work together with governments, community-based organisations and donors to ensure that solutions to these challenges are found together. This is what the Conference aims to do: to provide a platform where success stories and key learnings around partnerships can be presented.
Kramer added that Mozambique was chosen as a host country because of its approach to dealing with HIV/AIDS which is based upon capacitation, co-operation and upscaling. Mozambique's focus in fighting HIV/AIDS has been to enable people to cope with high levels of infection by transferring the necessary skills to deal with poverty and the burden of infection and disease. At the very centre of the programmes that have been implemented there, lies the essence of empowerment, enablement and partnership.
"Mozambique is one of the world's poorest countries and also one of 10 countries in the world with the highest HIV/AIDS infection rates - over 12,2 percent of Mozambicans aged between 15 and 49 years are HIV-positive. Its government committed to fighting HIV/AIDS soon after the scale of the epidemic became apparent."
For full information packs detailing speakers, topics and costs, please contact:
Renee Sabor at Metropolitan
e-mail: [email protected]
Tel: +27 (021) 940 5275 |
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