Summit seeks common front against HIV/AIDS

A special African summit on HIV/AIDS and related diseases such as tuberculosis, aimed at establishing a common front between African and global partners against the pandemic, opened on Tuesday in the Nigerian capital, Abuja. Declaring open the summit's ministerial and technical sessions, Nigerian Vice-President Atiku Abubakar stressed the need to take urgent measures to contain the spread of HIV in Africa.

"The HIV/AIDS problem in sub-Saharan Africa alone constitutes well over 70 percent of the global disease burden," he said, pointing out that 3.8 million cases were recorded in 2000 alone. Abubakar said the ravages of the disease had become a very serious threat to Africa's economic and social development.

An African consensus and plan of action being prepared at the two-day ministerial and technical sessions is scheduled to be adopted by the heads of state on Thursday. "The Abuja summit must be a summit with a difference," Organisation of African Unity Secretary-General Salim Ahmed Salim said. "It is intended to forge a common front for action ... aimed at pooling together, in a strategic manner, the continental energies and those of our partners in confronting this deadly pandemic."

The executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), K. Y. Amoako, said he hoped a consensus and plan of action articulated at the African Development Forum held by the ECA in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in December 2000 would provide useful building blocks for the summit.

"We very much hope that Abuja will be the place where our leaders articulate how they will lead the fight in their own countries," Amoako said in a statement presented on his behalf by ECA's deputy executive secretary, Lalla Ben Barka. Other international partners represented at the summit include members of the Joint UN Programme on AIDS, including UNICEF, UNDP, UNFPA, UNESCO, WHO, the World Bank and the UN International Drug Control Programme.