The Associated Press - Friday, September 17, 1999
Angus Shaw, Associated Press Writer

Of 16 presidents invited to attend a four-day AIDS conference of more than 6,300 officials, activists, traditional healers and scientists, not one -- not even host President Frederick Chiluba -- showed up.

"We are sorry political leaders didn't find it important enough to be with us," Kavumba Akachima, a Zambian youth leader, told the conference's closing ceremony on Thursday.

Sophia Monica, a conference spokeswoman, said African governments had done little to allocate resources to AIDS prevention and education, though two-thirds of the world's HIV infections were in Africa.

"African leadership must stop paying lip service and come up with positive action," she said.

One report showed that young girls are at special risk for HIV infection

-- partly because of the belief among many sexually active men that young girls are "safe," and even that sex with a virgin can cure AIDS. Other findings presented at the U.N.-sponsored gathering showed:

--Africa's youth, particularly adolescent girls and young women, bore the biggest brunt of the epidemic that has killed 11 million Africans in 15 years.

--By early 2001, AIDS will have left more than 13 million orphans in Africa.

--Half the world's HIV infections were found in just ten southern and eastern African nations, according to Jack Caldwell, from the Australian National University.

--A high rate of AIDS prevails in African prisons, where convict initiation rites and male rape were not curbed.

--Infection in military units ranges up to 60 percent, with disastrous effects when soldiers returned to civilian society.

"We cannot feel any measure of comfort in the situation that stares us in the face," said Eka Esu-Williams of Liberia, head of the continent-wide Society for Women Against AIDS.

Paul Kelly, a clinical scientist at the Zambia University in Lusaka, said the conference warned Africans against pinning hopes on the Western search for an AIDS cure.

"We can't extrapolate on the work done on a vaccine in one part of the world or even in different parts of Africa," Kelly said.

Africans cannot afford anti-viral drugs available in the industrialized world, but governments and donors had even been neglecting basic health and development programs that could at least relieve the suffering, the conference said.
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