Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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United Press International - Friday, 1 June 2001
William M. Reilly
Deputy Secretary-General Louise Frechette, another Canadian, made the announcement in the absence of Annan, who was in Washington where he addressed a U.S. Chamber of Commerce breakfast and called on American businesses to get more involved in the fight against AIDS. Fr chette called Lewis a "passionate advocate" for Africa. "He has devoted many, many years of his life to Africa."
The new Africa AIDS envoy told reporters he would try to harness recent momentum in the campaign.
"I feel truly privileged to receive this appointment and to have the confidence of the secretary-general to undertake this work," Lewis said. "I shall plunge into it with full heart."
Lewis said he felt "a cautious but insistent sense of hope." Drug prices had plummeted, African leaders were engaged as never before, and the secretary-general's own "dramatic personal commitment" to rally the international community marked a "galvanic movement in addressing this dreadful disease," he said.
"At no time, over the last 20 years in dealing with this incomparable tragedy in sub-Saharan Africa, has there ever been such a sense of collective resolve and collective possibility," Lewis said. While acknowledging the magnitude of the task ahead, he added, "it will be painfully slow and incremental, but this is the moment in time."
"What the world needs is a sense of hope and momentum, and we are on the cusp of that now," he said, pledging, as a first step, to sit down with senior officials in African countries to determine which anti-AIDS measures could be implemented as soon as possible "and gradually build outwards to a sub-regional level so that finally the whole continent is brought in."
Lewis, a former Canadian ambassador who served at the United Nations, was deputy executive director of the U.N. Children's Fund from 1995-1999. His responsibility will be to follow-up the African summit on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases held in Abuja, Nigeria, last April, and to next month's U.N. General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS, as related to Africa.
It was at the Abuja, Nigeria, summit that Annan said an annual global fund of $7 billion to $10 billion was needed for the AIDS fight.
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