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HIV/AIDS, Especially in Africa

If logic means tradition, it is not logical to bring up HIV/AIDS right after discussing the Security Council. But this sudden new scourge is outside tradition. Its pervasive necrosis had its day (10 January 2000) at the Security Council. The focus was on Africa. A month earlier, in conjunction with World AIDS Day (1 December), the UN had gathered together all major partners in the Africa-AIDS fight-- governments, UN agencies, corporations and NGOs-- to collaborate on what must be done. U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, chairing the Security Council in January 2000, has made this "Africa Month." He regards AIDS as Africa's Number One problem, overriding poverty and conflict. In 1998, AIDS killed over 2 million Africans, ten times the number killed in war. His concern was shared by President Obasanjo of Nigeria, who said at the General Assembly:

"It is with a heavy heart that I raise the issue of the HIV/AIDS pandemic throughout Africa. Our continent is bearing the brunt of this terrible disease that now kills around 2 million Africans annually, thus officially overtaking malaria as Africa's number one primary health-care problem. This situation is even more frightening in that it has now left 6 million children orphaned in the eastern and southern parts of Africa. In West Africa the disease has been spreading just as rapidly. Unlike malaria, which is location specific, HIV/AIDS knows neither climatic nor regional boundaries. Global cooperation is an imperative if we are to succeed in dealing with this scourge."

Participants in the 10 January meeting included U.S. Vice-President Al Gore, World Bank President James Wolfensohn, Secretary-General Kofi Annan and UNDP Administrator Mark Mallock Brown. The main presentation was made by Dr. Peter Piot, who heads the comprehensive inter-agency UN AIDS programme. His statement puts Africa in the global con-text. At the risk of choking you with a plethora of paper, I offer you his statement in Annex 3.

It is too bad that AIDS sometimes gets tangled up in Africa's legitimate complaints about discrimination and neglect. Except for transmission from mother to newborn, drugs would have no impact on the spread of AIDS. Prevention-- changing behaviour, safe sex-- is the only available way to control this disease. (I had the privilege of representing UNICEF at the first WHO-sponsored interagency meeting on AIDS in the early 1980's, convened by brilliant Dr. Jonathan Mann killed in the 1998 Swiss Air crash off Nova Scotia. While there have been major advances in treatment since that meeting, from a public health view essentially nothing has changed.)