Inter Press Service - December 6, 2000
Lewis Machipisa

Here to deliver a personal message to delegates at the African Development Forum 2000 which ends Thursday, Kaunda told of the pain of losing his son to Aids in 1986 and the difficulty of raising the six orphans left behind.

AIDS is also wrecking the country he freed from colonial oppression and led for 27 years until 1991 when he lost power. One in four adults in Zambia are believed to be infected with HIV.

Always a dramatic public speaker, when Kaunda takes to the podium he is known to weep, to sing and wave his trademark white handkerchief. This time around he broke out into an impromptu verse that urged Africans to act

now to defeat the scourge that plagues it. Some delegates joined in. Way back in 1986, few would have done what Kaunda did. He broke the silence and secrecy surrounding his son's death and disclosed that he had died of AIDS. Up to this day, many hide the cause of their beloved's death. In most cases, the cause of the death is either given as short or long illness.

Although for the first time there are signs that HIV incidence may have stabilised in parts of sub-Saharan African countries such as Zambia, Uganda and

Senegal, the number of those infected requires an emergency response.

The number of Africans living with HIV or AIDS is now 25.3 million out of a global figure of 34.5 million according to the joint United Nations Programme Against HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

At this rate, AIDS in the first decade of this century will kill more people than all the wars of the 20th century.

It has also been portrayed as the influenza of the beginning of the 20th century.

While speakers have run out of analogies for AIDS, action to reduce its spread is pitiful and HIV/AIDS continues to suck away lives at a ghastly rate. Governments have run out of excuses for not acting.

"We have many good words. But too often those good words are like the music we hear in supermarkets or hotel elevators: nice to hear at the time, quickly forgotten afterwards. It must not be the same with this African Development Forum 200. This is not a forum for fine words. It is a forum for action. The time for action is now and right now," stressed Kaunda.

He former Zambian president was addressing delegates to the African Development Forum (ADF) which kicked off on December 3 and ends on Thursday, on AIDS. The forum's theme is "AIDS, Africa's greatest Development Challenge" and is being attended by more than 1.500 participants from all over the world.

What is tragic for Kaunda is that Africa has the necessary resources "but is not allowed to use them in the struggle against HIV/AIDS."

Kaunda decried the fact the while Africa needs three billion US dollars each year to fight AIDS, the continent was paying out 15 billion US dollars each year in debt repayments. After this, African governments, cap in hand, go to the international community to beg for the resources to keep its people alive.

"Something is terribly wrong here. The world is denying life to people so that debts can be repaid, financial institutions retain their credit worthiness and banks their profitability. Which comes first, people's lives or debt repayments," asked Kaunda.

"Current debt repayment schedules make a mockery of that responsibility." Many countries in Africa spend four times as much on servicing their debts as on health.

Tanzania is a typical example. It spends nine times more on servicing debts than on basic health.

Zambian GNP per capita is 390 US dollars, but each Zambian owes 720 US dollars to foreign creditors. Every year the Zambian government spends 17 US dollars per person on health and 30 US dollars per person on debt service to western financial institutions.

This sharply contrasts with the 2.300 US dollars, says the Jubilee 2000 Coalition, the international anti-debt movement, that the G7 countries such as UK, Canada, France and Japan that is spend per person on health care.

The UNAIDS is encouraging countries that qualify for debt relief under highly Indebted Country Initiative (HIPC) to integrate HIV/IDS into their poverty reduction strategy papers so that resources can be freed for HIV/AIDS activities.

The World Bank estimates that AIDS is costing Africa about one percentage point of economic growth every year. For the hardest- hit countries, the costs are even more staggering: about 3-4 percentage points of growth.

After 10 years, the total output of these countries would be more than 35 percent lower than otherwise.

As one farmer in Malawi put it: "I am now spending more time digging the soil to bury people than cultivating it."

HIV-positive patients occupy 50-70 percent of hospital beds in urban areas in Zambia and Zimbabwe. They have occupied 39 percent of the beds in Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya and 70 percent of the beds in the Prince Regent Hospital in Bujumbura, Burundi, according to UNAIDS.

"Continuing to demand debt payments above health care is a scandal - even more so in the context of this appalling AIDS epidemic," says Ann Pettifor, director of Jubilee 2000 Coalition.

Describing HIV/AIDS as a devious disease that infects silently, works secretly and destroys ruthlessly, Kaunda noted that in this age of information technology, WWW should not only stand for the world wide web but should be the driving force and inspiration for Africa's new slogan against AIDS: We Will Win.

"We must take action to prevent the further spread of this disease so that in future there will be no such person as an AIDS orphan, and we will be able to wipe the very term out of our vocabulary," said Kaunda.

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