Region slow but tenacious in AIDS fight - UN

Southern African countries are showing determination to overcome HIV/AIDS, but many have started too late and hurdles remain, Stephen Lewis, the UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, has said. Briefing reporters at the UN Headquarters in New York on Thursday, Lewis said countries like South Africa were slow to embrace a treatment programme, while others were overwhelmed by logistical, as seemed to be the case in Tanzania. He suggested that current anti-AIDS programmes would have been more effective had they been implemented several years ago. "But there is an almost universal, Pavlovian reflex - for example, in Botswana, Rwanda, Zambia, Malawi, Kenya and Namibia - to demolish the obstacles and get pervasive treatment underway," Lewis added.