Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2000. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Associated Press - Saturday, Dec. 2, 2000
Abebe Andualem, Associated Press Writer
The U.N. Economic Commission for Africa has invited 1,500 participants to discuss progress in preventing and treating AIDS and to share national responses to the epidemic that in the last two decades has left 13.7 million Africans dead out of global total of 16.3 million.
"It is no longer merely a health problem but poses a major development crisis in the continent," the ECA said in a statement. "Sub-Saharan Africa has only one-tenth of the global population, but it bears the brunt of the disease with more than 80 percent of the AIDS-related deaths in the world."
The HIV infection that causes AIDS has taken a devastating toll in poverty-stricken African nations, depriving them of their youth and labor, reducing economic growth and jeopardizing development prospects as well as political stability, the ECA said.
U.N. Secretary-General will deliver a keynote address Tuesday to the conference, the annual gathering of the African Development Forum. A forum of heads of state is planned to facilitate a faster and more efficient continentwide response to combating the disease.
The presidents of Rwanda, Uganda and Botswana, the vice president of Malawi and the prime ministers of Senegal and Namibia are expected. Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa have yet to confirm their participation.
The annual U.N. report on AIDS says the number of new HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa declined for the first time to 3.8 million from 4 million. That still leaves 25.3 million people infected, an increase of nearly a million.
The number of people living with the virus worldwide is expected to rise to 36.1 million by year's end - with 5.3 million of those people newly infected.
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