UN Secretary-General proposes US $7-billion fund

A special summit of African leaders on combating HIV/AIDS opened on Thursday in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, proposing the creation of a fund of at least US $7 billion to fight HIV. “The war on AIDS will not be won without a war chest of a size far beyond what is available so far,” Annan told participants in the summit, who include 47 African presidents, former US president Bill Clinton, and the heads of several UN agencies. “Money is needed for education and awareness campaigns, for HIV tests, for condoms, for drugs, for scientific research, to provide care for orphans and of course to improve our health-care systems,” he said. “At a minimum, we need to be able to spend an additional seven-to-ten billion dollars a year on the struggle against HIV/AIDS in the world as a whole, over an extended period of time.” Annan said that while the proposed sum “sounds a lot, and is a lot”, it was only slightly more than one percent of the world’s annual military spending. Such expenditure was imperative, he said, to achieve the global objectives of halting and reversing the spread of the virus, preventing mother-to-child transmissions, putting care and treatment within the reach of all, achieving scientific breakthroughs to cure HIV, and protecting those most vulnerable to the epidemic, particularly orphans. Africa remains the worst affected region of the world: 24 million of the 36 million people living with HIV are on the continent and it is estimated that AIDS kills 10 times more people in Africa than war. The summit was convened by Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo under the auspices of the Organization of African Unity (OAU). In his welcome address, Obasanjo described HIV/AIDS as “the greatest impediment to Africa’s progress in this century”, having led to the death of over a million people in the past decade. “We are an endangered continent,” he said. He also said Africa’s huge debt burden needed to be lifted to enable it to better tackle the virus. The summit is an attempt by the OAU, the Nigerian government and international partners, including UN agencies, to highlight the scope of the problem, galvanize political will and forge a common front in the battle against HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and other related infectious diseases. “Our international partners must know that Africa is ready to tackle HIV,” OAU Secretary-General Salim Ahmed Salim said. “We believe the time has come for (African) leaders to commit themselves afresh to guiding their people in this fight.” Clinton delivered a goodwill message in which he commended Annan for his proposals and his recent efforts to persuade the world’s major pharmaceutical companies to make anti-retroviral drugs cheaply available to those that need them. But he added a note of caution: “If we expect the fund proposed by the UN Secretary-General to work, the money must go into a system that will work.” By the end of proceedings on Friday, the summit is expected to produce a declaration which will represent a consensus and plan of action for African countries and international partners in the fight against HIV/AIDS and related diseases. The consensus and plan of action were worked out at ministerial and expert sessions held on Tuesday and Wednesday.