Miami Herald - Monday, May 28, 2001
Warren P. Strobel, Herald World Staff

Then they pleaded with Secretary of State Colin Powell, an envoy from the richest and most powerful nation on earth, for more help to fight the AIDS epidemic that is killing Africans by the millions. Give us the drugs that are available in the West, but too expensive here, to prolong our lives, they said.

"I know if nothing is done, I also will die one of these fine days," Patricia Ochieng, who lost her husband and child to AIDS, told Powell on Sunday in a slum outside Nairobi, Kenya, before he flew to Uganda for the final stop of his African trip.

If something could be done to prolong her life, "I'd really appreciate it," Ochieng said. "I look forward to the day when these life-saving drugs will be made available to Africa."

Powell heard much the same message after he arrived in Uganda, regarded as a model for an early and aggressive response to the epidemic. HIV infection among pregnant women in Kampala, the capital, dropped from 31 percent in 1990 to 14 percent in 1998.

"We could do more with more resources," said Francis Omasawa of Uganda's Ministry of Health. In 10 years, AIDS could be reduced "to a normal disease," he said.

Powell, who seemed moved by the presentations, made no concrete promises beyond announcing two new programs, totaling $50 million over five years, to help Uganda prevent AIDS and care for its sufferers. He said he would take the message back to President Bush.

Powell, a former general, also described the fight against AIDS in strikingly military terms: "There is no war on the face of the earth right now that is more serious, that is more grave than the war we see here in sub-Saharan Africa against HIV-AIDs."

Most Africans can't afford the $10,000-a-year cost of drugs, known as anti-retrovirals, that can ameliorate the virus' effects. Pharmaceutical firms and the Bush administration have come under increasing pressure to make the drugs available to the developing world at discount prices.

The secretary of state spent part of Sunday discussing with President Yoweri Museveni the 18-year civil war in Sudan and the conflict in Congo, both of which border Uganda. He said he told Museveni the United States "would be playing a more active role" in trying to end the war between Sudan's government in Khartoum and rebels in the mostly black, Christian south.

To help Sudan, the United States is sending emergency shipments of 40,000 tons to address a famine that has begun to take hold after two years of drought. Powell said the United States also would try to bring a cease-fire into effect.

The aid will be given to both sides in the conflict, said Andrew Natsios, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Museveni, whose government has in the past given shelter to anti-Khartoum rebels operating in southern Sudan, said he welcomed the U.S. decision to take an active part in diplomacy to end the war.

The Bush administration has been pressured by a combination of religious conservatives and liberal Democrats to take a harder stand against the Khartoum government.

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