10th June 2001

UN gears up to fight AIDS scourge

A special session of the UN General Assembly is scheduled to take place from June 25 to 27 to define a global plan of action to fight a disease which killed over three million people just last year alone.

Stephen Lewis of Canada, a recently-appointed UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, said last week that he once used strong language to describe the delinquent response on the part of the international community.

But since then, he pointed out, there has been an astonishing shift of events and mood ¥in a period of about for months ¥ that has generated a sense of hope.

A scene he had once witnessed in a hospital in Swaziland was straight out of DanteOs Inferno.

OThe sheer numbers tear away every vestige of dignity; it renders human beings anonymous. You witness it and you experience a simultaneous spasm of helplessness, anger and resolve,O he added.

Lewis said the continent must be cleansed of the scourge and it cannot possibly happen soon enough.

The disease is causing the most damage to sub-Saharan Africa where some 13 million children have lost one or both parents to AIDS.

By the year 2010, there would be about 40 million AIDS orphans in Africa alone where families are depleting their resources in order to buy drugs for the male head of household, only to be left in abject poverty after his death.

Stephanie Urdang, Advisor, Gender and HIV/AIDS at the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), recounts a grim story in a predominantly poor neighborhoud in Durban, South Africa where there were only two funeral parlours back in 1996.

Now there are 55, she says. But what is particularly significant is the type of businesses that have sprung up in close proximity, most of them providing micro-credit to enable families to buy coffins.

The spread of the disease, according to the UN, could be curtailed only with education, awareness, anti-AIDS drugs, and increased financial resources to help the poorer nations struggling for economic survival.

Last month, Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for the creation of a Global Trust Fund amounting to a staggering $10 billion annually for care, prevention and treatment of AIDS patients.

The pledges and contributions, mostly from Western nations, are expected to come during the Special Session later this month.E

The UN has also extracted pledges from some of the worldOs key pharmaceutical firms to provide free or low-cost anti-AIDS drugs to developing nations, and specifically to the 49 least developed countries (LDCs), the poorest of the worldOs poor.

Addressing 500 members of the US Chamber of Commerce in Washington DC last week, Annan laid out a scenario that could also eventually undermine the interests of the business community.

OAs 42 percent of US exports go to markets in the developing world,O he warned, Othe negative impact of AIDS on American business should be obvious.O

Instilling fear in the minds of American business tycoons, he said that the epidemic is not only bad for business, but also undermines regional and global security and stability. Meanwhile, in a new twist to the spread of the disease, the proportion of women living with HIV/AIDS has risen steadily in recent years.

OToday, young women in the developing world are twice as likely to be infected as men,O admits Dr Peter Piot, Executive Director of UNAIDS.

In Oa terrifying pattern that is emerging,O about 55 percent of all HIV positive adults in sub-Saharan Africa are women compared with a decade ago when men outnumbered women.

According to UN figures, teenage girls are infected at a rate five or six times greater than their male counterparts. And in the world as a whole, at least half of all new infections are among women.

The UN also argues that the unequal power relationships between women and men, in which women often do not have the power to insist on safe and responsible sex practices, increases their susceptibility to HIV/AIDS.

If there was no gender inequality, the scenario would be completely different. OWe would still have the disease, but not an epidemic,O says Noeleen Heyzer of Singapore, Executive Director of UNIFEM.

She argues that while the disease is a health issue, the epidemic is a gender issue.

Gender inequality is at the heart of the AIDS epidemic, Owhich today is our biggest threat to development.O

OWe must address power imbalances in every single policy, strategy, and programme related to prevention, treatment and care, if we seriously want to tackle this global challenge.O

OIt is not simply a matter of justice and fairness. Gender inequality is just fatal,O declares Heyzer, who incidentally, traces her family roots to Sri Lanka.