Experts gather to discuss HIV/AIDS pandemic

An international conference on HIV/AIDS began in the Zambian capital, Lusaka, at the weekend with AIDS activists calling for the disease to be declared a "global disaster." Speaking at the opening of the conference the executive director of UNAIDS, Peter Piot, said that there were 16,000 new infections each day in Africa during 1998, with at least 50 percent of these among young people. Piot added that it would take years to stem the disease. He added that the 21 countries with the highest HIV infection rate were in Africa, with the infection rate exceeding at least 10 percent of the population in at least 10 of these countries. Southern Africa has one of the fastest rates of new infections in the world, with almost a quarter of adults in Botswana, Namibia, Swaziland and Zimbabwe HIV positive. In South Africa alone it is estimated that there are about 1,500 new infections each day. In Zambia the World Bank says that every teenager had about a 60 percent chance of contracting the HIV virus. The South African newspaper 'Business Day' on Tuesday quoted Zambia's health minister Nkandu Luo as saying that the Copperbelt Province in central Zambia was one of the most affected regions in the country. Official government figures show that an estimated 19 percent of the adult population in Zambia are HIV positive, with the 15 to 30 age group among the most affected. In its 1999 Progress of Nations Report, UNICEF said that the number of children orphaned by AIDS in Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland and Botswana had increased by 400 percent between 1994 and 1997. It said that by the year 2000 the number of AIDS orphans in the region would have increased by more than 50 percent. The report also said that of those pregnant girls between the ages of 15 and 19 were attending antenatal clinics in urban areas in Botswana at least 31 percent were HIV positive, 26 percent in Zimbabwe, 23 percent in Swaziland, 19 percent in Mozambique and 17 percent in Zambia. According to the UNICEF report, by the year 2005 AIDS will be responsible for 64 percent of deaths of children under age of five, 50 percent in South Africa and Zimbabwe, 48 percent in Namibia and 25 percent in Zambia. It added that of the 590,000 children that were infected with AIDS last year, 530,000 were in Sub-Saharan Africa. Despite the fears raised by AIDS activists, the opening of the Lusaka conference was marked by the notable absence of African leaders. According to media reports none of the 10 heads of state that were invited attended the opening.