USIA Washington File - 14 September 1999
Jim Fisher-Thompson - USIA Staff Writer
The volunteers are community health workers who live and work in various provinces in Zambia. According to a Peace Corps press release, their jobs involve working with local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and community leaders to find ways to continue educating Zambians about AIDS. At the conference they will talk about their experiences as AIDS educators.
The five young Americans, who hail from communities in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Ohio, Washington, and Virginia, have agreed to serve for two years in villages and small towns in Zambia. Altogether, 110 Peace Corps volunteers currently serve in the southern African nation. The Zambian government provides housing while the U.S. government provides daily living expenses for the volunteers. An amount of money is also set aside that they will receive when they complete their service.
According to the Peace Corps, more than 7,000 volunteers now serve in 77 countries, working to bring clean water to communities, teach children, protect the environment, help start small businesses, and prevent the spread of AIDS.
More than 3,500 delegates, including researchers and social workers as well as victims of the disease from 25 countries around the world, are attending the Lusaka AIDS conference. President Robert Mugabe was asked to address the gathering to tell how Zimbabwe is battling the disease, which has brought devastation to great swaths of east and southern Africa.
The theme of this year's conference is "Looking into the Future: Setting the Priorities for HIV/AIDS/STD in Africa." ("STD" stands for "sexually transmitted diseases," such as syphilis and gonorrhea, which are often associated with AIDS and facilitate transmission of the virus.)
The conference follows an announcement made by the Clinton administration last July that it will increase its assistance to AIDS programs in the developing world by $100 million.
According to United Nations statistics, an estimated 5,500 people die of AIDS in Africa every day and the AIDS virus in Africa accounts for two-thirds of the world's infections. In the past 15 years AIDS has killed 11 million Africans, which is more than 80 percent of the world's total AIDS deaths.
The AIDS epidemic in Africa has taken a high priority in Washington and White House Director of National AIDS Policy Sandra Thurman has visited the continent four times in the past year assessing what the United States could do to help Africans battle the disease.
At a July 22 hearing before the House Subcommittee on Drug Policy, Thurman noted that "since 1986, this nation has contributed over $1,000 million to the global fight against AIDS. More than 50 percent of those funds have been used to address the epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. Overall, nearly half of all of the development assistance devoted to HIV care and prevention in the developing world has come from the U.S. The United States has also been the leading supporter of the United Nations Joint Program on AIDS -- UNAIDS -- contributing more than 25 percent of its budget."
Thurman told the lawmakers that this assistance is "a strong record of engagement and one of which we can be proud, but, unfortunately, it has not kept pace with this terrible pandemic. We have done much, but there remains much more that we and the other developed nations can and must do."
After her last trip to Africa, Thurman said, she reported her findings to President Clinton, and he and Vice President Gore "agreed that we needed to respond to do more immediately and worked to develop an initiative to address this growing pandemic." Accordingly, she said, the administration announced in July "a broad new initiative to invest $100 million in the FY [fiscal year] 2000 budget for this effort."
The new initiative, which will double the funding for AIDS prevention and care in Africa, includes $48 million for prevention, $23 million to support home and community-based care of the terminally ill, $10 million for the care of children orphaned by AIDS, and $19 million to strengthen treatment infrastructure, such as hospitals.
The U.S. business community has also been galvanized into action on the AIDS front, with the Corporate Council on Africa (CCA) sponsoring a conference in Washington September 15 called "Coping with Africa's AIDS Crisis." Thurman and Dr. Helene Gayle, AIDS director at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), were invited to address the meeting.
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