UNAIDS News - December 10, 2001
Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso , 10 December 2001 - The commitments made at international conferences this year must be met if the epidemic is to be effectively pushed back in Africa and other seriously affected areas, according to the head of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).
"Turning back the epidemic requires nothing more and nothing less than keeping the commitments that governments have made in the past year," said Dr Peter Piot, Executive Director of UNAIDS. "From the Abuja conference in April to the UN Special Session on HIV/AIDS in June, there have been ample promises of resources and political will. It is now time to turn those commitments into action."
Speaking at a news conference on the opening day of the 12th International Conference on AIDS and STIs (sexually transmitted infections) in Africa, being held here from 9-13 December, Dr. Piot also referenced the theme of the meeting, "The Community Commits Itself," in referring to the need to back commitments to stop AIDS with action on the ground.
There is broad agreement that scaling up AIDS efforts from community to national level is essential to link local, district, national and regional decision-making, to overcome rural-urban divides, and to involve all social and economic sectors in the response to AIDS. These efforts will cost money - to effectively respond to the epidemic, AIDS spending in developing countries must rise to US$7-10 billion a year. In sub-Saharan Africa, current spending is only a tenth of the US$4 billion the continent needs. In remarks today, Dr. Piot pointed out that there are many possible sources of funding for these efforts. In addition to direct funding, for example, he emphasized that a greater proportion of the benefits of debt relief should be targeted to HIV/AIDS.
"Scaling down disease can only take place by scaling up resources," said Stephen Lewis, the Secretary-General's Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. "The epidemic's magnitude is staggering and the world simply cannot afford not to move forward against AIDS. Preventing disease works best when governments commit both their leadership and their resources, first in Africa, but also globally."
The path towards bringing responses 'to scale' has been significantly strengthened this year. At the summit of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in Abuja in April the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for a global fund to fight infectious diseases and issued a call to action setting priorities for the fight against AIDS. The Abuja meeting marked a turning point in Africa's response to AIDS. OAU members pledged to allocate 15% of their national budgets to health in order to fight AIDS and related diseases.
Two months later the UN General Assembly convened a Special Session on HIV/AIDS at the highest political level. Member states unanimously adopted a Declaration of Commitment setting goals and targets and succeeded in focusing the world's attention on the epidemic. The past year has seen HIV/AIDS move to the top of the world's development agenda.
In recent years, a number of African nations have also made real progress against the epidemic, both in terms of prevention and treatment. The theme of the conference is "The Community Commits Itself," and one barrier to community engagement is the lack of dissemination of success. UNAIDS believes greater efforts need to be made to identify and disseminated successful experiences so that they might be applied nationally.
Meantime, the crisis continues to grow in sub-Saharan Africa, where AIDS killed 2.3 million people this year. There were an estimated 3.4 million new HIV infections in Africa in 2001, bringing the total number of Africans infected with the virus to 28.1 million. In 2001 alone, some 5 million people around the world were newly-infected with HIV, and 3 million died of AIDS.
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