Speaking at a September AIDS conference in Kenya, UN AIDS Program director Michel Sidibe warned that, if left unchecked, the AIDS epidemic threatens to become a catastrophe that will wreck Africa’s future.
Sidibe’s speech reinforced the findings of a UN AIDS report, “Accelerating Action Against AIDS in Africa,” that called for increasing the pace of action against AIDS,
The effects of AIDS in Africa are eroding decades of development efforts. In high-HIV-prevalence countries, families are unraveling, economies are slowing down, and social services are deteriorating. In Southern Africa, where HIV prevalence is higher than anywhere else in the world, AIDS has exacerbated food insecurity, demonstrating how the epidemic and humanitarian crises intertwine.
AIDS has killed an estimated 15 million people in Africa already, and signs are not encouraging to prevent another 15 million deaths. The UN AIDS report notes that infection rates in southern Africa are unbelievably high — in Botswana, for example, 40 percent of the adult population is believed to be HIV positive. A World Health Organization study of pregnant women in southern Africa found 20 percent of those tested were HIV positive.
More money is being committed to fight the AIDS crisis in Africa, but whether aid agencies and governments will be able to translate that money into an effective anti-AIDS strategy remains to be seen. If they fail, Africa’s future is likely to be as bleak as its recent past.
Source:
AIDS ‘threatens African security’. The BBC, September 21, 2003.
U.N.: AIDS Is Major Challenge in Africa. Associated Press, September 21, 2003.