Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2002. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Reuters NewMedia - Wednesday November 27, 2002
Andrew Quinn

Stephen Lewis, the United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, said the food shortages faced by more than 14 million southern Africans stemmed from the slow collapse of the region's farm sector under the weight of the disease.

"The reality of AIDS is right at the heart of the famine," Lewis told a news conference in Johannesburg at the start of a 3-week trip to the region. "The worst years of this tragedy are yet to come. We are simply on the threshold," he said.

Lewis, who was planning to tour Namibia, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia, said food supply was one of the main casualties of Africa's AIDS crisis.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that seven million agricultural workers have perished from AIDS in 25 African countries since 1985 -- and warns that 16 million more could die if prevention programs are not improved.

Southern Africa, the world region worst hit by AIDS with close to 30 million people infected, is also struggling with a severe drought that has left more than 14 million people on the brink of starvation.

EVERYTHING BREAKS DOWN

While many African governments and some foreign donor agencies say weather is the primary cause of the current food crisis, Lewis said AIDS was the real culprit as the disease wiped out agricultural labor, diverted family resources and overwhelmed traditional community safety nets.

"Everything breaks down in the face of AIDS," Lewis said, noting that even if rains returned to the region's parched fields, the need for emergency food relief would probably continue well into 2003.

"I think we are facing the possibility of a continued food crisis and a continued need for food delivery," he said. "You can't decimate your agricultural workers and expect to produce the same kind of food you had before."

World Food Program officials in Johannesburg said the international relief agency believed AIDS was an important factor behind the food crisis, but not the only one.

"It is not a stand-alone cause, but you cannot ignore the fact that it is one of the strongest factors," WFP spokeswoman Jennifer Abrahamson said.

"MORAL DEFAULT" BY DONOR NATIONS

Lewis said the crisis in the agricultural sector could be repeated in other parts of African society as AIDS bites deeper, and called for a massive increase in international aid to help the continent fight the disease.

Noting that only about $2.1 billion had been pledged to a global fund set up in 2001 to spearhead the fight against AIDS, Lewis said aid could run out by 2003 if developed nations did not step up their donations.

"We could stop this pandemic in its tracks if only the world would get mobilized," Lewis said.

While some regional African programs have noted strong successes on AIDS education and the provision of anti-AIDS drugs, the lack of cash has prevented these projects from being scaled up to meet the needs of a continent in crisis.

"The dollars aren't there, in one of the great moral defaults of the end of the 20th Century and beginning of the 21st Century," Lewis said.

"Millions of people are going to die ... it is abysmal and unconscionable."

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