Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1999. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Reuters NewMedia - Thursday July 22, 1999
Rosalind Russell

UNICEF's Deputy Executive Director Stephen Lewis told reporters that the devastation the virus had reaped across Africa was a "modern incarnation of Dante's inferno."

"Never has Africa faced such a plague," he said. "One wonders how the continent will cope."

Lewis said AIDS had killed 1.4 million people in the region in 1998 and the spread of the epidemic was accelerating. By the end of next year, another two million children would be orphaned and the numbers would continue to rise exponentially.

The orphans, especially girls, were left shouldering adult responsibilities such as caring for the sick as well as younger brothers and sisters, and were vulnerable to abuse, exploitation and malnutrition, the agency said. Mother-to-child transmission of the HIV virus during pregnancy or through breastfeeding has eroded all the hard won infant and child survival gains of the last 20 years, Lewis said.

If the spread of the virus is not contained, AIDS could increase under-five mortality by more than 100 percent in those regions worst affected by the disease.

But there are some glimmers of hope.

A new drug, nevirapine, still under trial in Uganda, could cut mother-to-child transmission rates by up to 50 percent -- at a cost of just $4 for the full treatment. Other AIDS treatments such as AZT cost hundreds of dollars and are way beyond the means of most Africans.

Lewis said UNICEF was excited about the implications of nevirapine, which the agency believed could save millions of lives.

Nevertheless, UNICEF said education rather than new treatments was the only effective way to halt the spread of the deadly virus.

Lewis urged African leaders to take the lead in breaking the "conspiracy of silence" surrounding the disease in a continent where myth and ignorance have fuelled its rampant spread.

"The disease must become an obsession among the leadership," he said. "A leader who fails to speak out against HIV/AIDS fails the people of his nation." He also criticised what he said was a "massive distortion of priorities" by Western governments which had failed to respond to the crisis.

"It is morally indefensible, morally unconscionable, that the West is prepared to spend upwards of $40 billion to fight a war in the Balkans and less than one percent of that to save the lives of tens of millions of women and children in Africa," Lewis said.
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