Africa: Leaders Call for More Aids Funds at UN Summit
By Staff Writer
NEW YORK--Marking the 30th anniversary of the discovery of AIDS, African leaders have called for a ``final solution’’ to combat the HIV and AIDS epidemic, which has killed nearly 30 million people in the past three decades.
Thirty presidents and heads of government across the continent were Wednesday at the summit where UN leader Ban Ki-moon set a target of ending new infections by the end of the decade.
More than six million people currently get drugs to keep AIDS and HIV at bay. But more than nine million still do not get the treatment and an estimated 1.8 million people a year are still dying from AIDS.
According to UN figures, 34 million people around the world have AIDS, and about half do not know they have the disease.
African presidents said they were making spectacular progress, with the number of new infections in the continent brought down from 2.2 million a year in 2001 to 1.8 million in 2009. But they added that Africa desperately needs finance for drugs.
Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan whose country has Africa's second highest number of people living with AIDS, behind South Africa,warned that the consequence of inaction would be greater than the current toll the disease was causing for the world’s people.
``Thirty years since the beginning of the AIDS pandemic, the time is ripe for a final solution. I reiterate Nigeria’s unequivocal support for a global response to this scourge. The human, social and economic costs of inaction are too great to contemplate.
``As a consequence it is incumbent upon the Security Council to set clear, decisive goals in order that our efforts to maintain peace can add to the armoury of weapons against HIV/AIDS,’’ he said.
Lesotho's Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili told the summit that the international community cannot remain deaf to the silent whispers for help from the disadvantaged countries.
At the same forum,Gabon's President Ali Bongo Ondimba said that resources given to Africa "remain insufficient given the size of the HIV/AIDS impact on the continent."
The summit’s final statement is to set out the target number of people who will get AIDS drugs. Health groups have joined poorer nations in pressing for rich countries to commit to pay for drugs for all nine million sufferers that still do not get treatment.
The UN secretary general said that the international goal must now be to eliminate Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome by 2020 -- "zero new infections, zero stigma and zero AIDS-related deaths."