Leaders to ask for anti-AIDS “package”

Southern African heads of state meeting in Windhoek are expected to demand that international drug makers fund a package of services along with cheaper drugs to fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic killing millions of the region’s most productive workers, news reports said.

Reports said SADC was considering a recommendation by ministers that they ask drug companies to provide such services as training of health personnel along with the anti-retroviral drugs. Outgoing SADC chairman Joaquim Chissano, the president of Mozambique, described the pandemic in his opening address as “a security and developmental threat.”

“The most affected people are the young able-bodied members of our society on whom we depend for the production of goods and services,” he said. “Our governments also have to deal with the situation of thousands of orphans left behind by the worst pandemic ever in living memory.”