HIV/AIDS could wipe out economic, social gains

Poverty-reduction measures have not yet succeeded in reaching the rural poor to improve their quality of life, while the HIV/AIDS pandemic posed such a threat that it could reverse all the economic and social gains recently achieved in Tanzania, the UN country team for Tanzania told a meeting of the UN Economic and Social Council on Monday. Tanzania was on Tuesday ranked at 140 in the UNDP’s Human Development Index. It estimated Tanzanian life expectancy at birth of 51.1 years; combined primary, secondary and tertiary education at 32 percent; and reported a ‘human development index value’ of 0.436, on a scale of zero to one.

Joyce Mapunjo, Assistant Commissioner of the External Finance Division at the Ministry of Finance of Tanzania, said that one of the aims of the national poverty eradication strategy was to reduce abject poverty 50 per cent by 2010 and to eradicate it by 2025. The UN could support Tanzania’s efforts by backing national priorities, mobilising more resources for poverty-reduction and harmonising the rules and procedures of the various UN agencies to make them more user-friendly, Mapunjo said. [for further details, see separate IRIN story of 11 July headlined “TANZANIA: Poverty and HIV/AIDS hampering development”]