Inter Press Service - December 4, 2000
Lewis Machipisa

"From being devastated by the news of my HIV status and having being overwhelmed by the thought of a future with no prospects, I went through a very rough time," Mjele told a visibly touched audience at the African Development Forum (ADF) 2000 on AIDS.

Yet she weathered the storm because "death was not on my agenda. I was young and knew deep down that I still wanted to live."

After painful consideration, she went public, to "let people see and know that I am not an HIV statistic, but a dynamic young woman full of life and dignity, who happens to have HIV," says Mjele.

She works with HOPE, an Aids-support group in South Africa's sprawling, formerly Blacks-only, township of Soweto.

"Many in a similar situation would not even go out to learn and update themselves with information about this virus that is affecting us so much. Not many can stand the risk of being discriminated against," said Mjele.

ADF 2000, whose theme is 'AIDS: Africa's greatest development challenge', seeks to generate commitments from African leaders on scaling up the fight against Aids.

Listening to Mjele, Peter Piot, executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, UNAIDS, felt a "great spirit of hope and solidarity." "Action comes from openness, realism and hope. These are the qualities of leadership Africa possesses in Facing AIDS, from the family, to the nation, to the continent," said Piot told more than 1.500 delegates attending the 2000 conference organised by the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).

"The first step is to bring down the barriers of shame and silence. When locals speak out, they create the space for people with HIV/AIDS to speak out fearlessly and so communities are empowered to act against AIDS. And when national leaders speak out, their example resonates throughout the nation," said Piot.

Piot told of a group of women he met last week, in Uganda, who are preparing their children to be orphans, organising everything from memory books to sustainable arrangements for micro-credit.

"These women are truly leaders. They have faced up to AIDS realistically and truthfully, it is they who have had to tell their children their fathers died of AIDS and that their mother is infected with HIV too," said Piot.

"But they have also kept hope alive in planning a safer future for their children to live in dignity," he added.

Africa is home to the largest number of AIDS orphans in the world. The number of global orphans in 1999 was 13 million and 12 million of these were in Africa according to UNAIDS.

While a lot of effort has been put into raising AIDS awareness, the stigma attached to AIDS is frustrating efforts to reduce it and raise wider awareness. The consequences have been grave.

As a child growing up, never in his wildest dreams, did K.Y Amoako, ECA executive director, "imagine that microscopic bugs could push my whole continent to the edge of the abyss."

"You see these orphanages, you see the villages of graves, you read these reports, you meet with people all over Africa whose lives and futures have been turned upside down," says Amoako.

The African continent has the highest incidence of HIV/AIDS in the world - with an estimated 25.3 million people in sub-Saharan Africa infected - nearly a million more than in 1999 and 70 percent of the global total of 36.1 million, notes UNAIDS in its latest global update.

Some 2.4 million people died of the disease in Africa, this year, compared to 2.3 million last year and they constitute 80 percent of global AIDS deaths. But two and a half million Africans, mainly those in the productive years of their lives, are expected to have died from AIDS this year alone. Ten times that number are living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

According to UNAIDS, seven million young people aged between 15- 24 years are being newly infected every year. It has now been ascertained that 95 percent of the 13,2 million children orphaned by AIDS are in Africa, where 40-70 percent of all beds in urban hospitals are occupied by HIV patients in most severely affected countries.

"The Aids pandemic is undermining social and economic structures and reversing the fragile gains made since independence," said Amoako.

Amoako was, however, optimistic. "There is some good news. I see many many leaders now openly coming to the forefront on this, speaking about it.We need to focus on prevention and care," said Amoako. In the past, African leaders have shown little political will to take early action to counter the pandemic.

This has been compounded by discrimination and social stigmatisation of people living with AIDS.

"The implications go beyond simple life expectancy. As we are learning to our cost, AIDS is uniquely devastating in terms of creating and deepening poverty, reversing achievements in education, diverting meagre health budgets away from other priorities, and putting a brake on economic growth," said Mark Malloch Brown, UNDP administrator.

In some countries, households that lose their breadwinners have seen incomes drop by 80 percent or more. Two-thirds of AIDS affected families in urban areas have been forced to cheap housing in slum areas. Entire economies are at risk. The Gross National Product of Botswana, perhaps the worst afflicted country to date, is expected to be 38 percent smaller by the year 2021 that it would have been otherwise.

"The international community needs to do much more to help raise the estimated three billion US dollars a year needed for prevention and palliative treatments for up to half of those infected and the billions beyond that are required for anti-viral treatment that can only be met by external financing if national health priorities are not to be completely distorted," Brown told participants Monday.

In much of Africa, annual health spending is often less than six dollars per person

To turn back HIV, total social mobilisation on the scale similar to when Africa fought out colonialism is needed, Piot noted.

"The turmoil and the questions raised by AIDS for the future of Africa are as fundamental as those of the liberation struggle, and the liberation struggle is the only comparable historical example of a total social mobilisation on the scale required for Africa to turn back HIV," Piot said.

"Then, as now, international solidarity can assist, but ultimately the struggle is up to Africa to win. But to win, unity is needed"

In the fight against AIDS, Organisation of African Unity (OAU) secretary general, Salim Ahmed Salim, says there is need to reorient the concept of national security to transcend invasion of borders and threats to governments.

"A pandemic such as HIV/AIDS is clearly a threat to the security of our nations. This is a major catastrophic confronting the people of Africa," says Salim.

"It is a serious war and like all war situations, total mobilisation is required and it has to be confronted on a war footing, just as we do in confronting an armed invasions. Our societies, in their entirety, have to enter into a combat mode for liberating themselves from the pandemic."(END/IPS/lm/sm/00).
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