Oct. 14, 2004
GLOBE AND MAIL
Addis Ababa — Africa must brace itself for an AIDS time bomb as 8,000 people are infected with HIV a day in the region worst hit by the pandemic, the United Nations warned Thursday.
Seventy per cent of the 45 million people worldwide infected with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa – even though the region is home to only 11 per cent of the world's population, said a fund set up to combat three of the world's most devastating diseases.
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria said that per capita growth in half of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa is falling by 0.5 to 1.2 per cent each year as a direct result of AIDS. By 2010, per capita GDP in some of the hardest-hit countries may drop by eight per cent and per capita consumption may fall even farther, the Geneva-based fund said.
“If we think we are seeing an impact today, we have to brace ourselves because it is set to get very much worse in the future,” warned Alan Whiteside, member of a commission set up by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to deal with HIV/AIDS and governance in Africa.
The Commission on HIV/AIDS and Governance in Africa is calling for a massive scaling up of treatment to prevent a doomsday-style scenario with the collapse of societies under the weight of the pandemic.
Only 50,000 Africans have access to life-prolonging antiretroviral drugs while at least four million people are in need, the 20-member commission told several hundred health experts and politicians in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.
The Global Fund say that the disease is already claiming the lives of thousands of teachers and leading to school closures across sub-Saharan Africa. Health-care systems in many countries are overwhelmed by a growing number of HIV/AIDS patients, and studies forecast that health-care costs in hardest-hit countries may increase 10-fold over the next several years as a result of the pandemic.
Former Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda, whose son died of an AIDS-related illness in 1986, made an impassioned appeal to the international community to help the world's poorest continent.
“African governments do not have the capacity to sustain treatment programs at national level,” Mr. Kaunda said. “They need the support and assistance of the international community in order to scale up treatment programs in a sustainable manner.”
Earlier this year, the UN AIDS agency revised estimates of the annual cost of fighting HIV/AIDS to $12-billion (U.S.) from $10-billion.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20041014.waids1014/BNStory/International/