NEWS
World leaders including Clinton & Ndungane call for faster action against AIDS
Thursday, July 11, 2002 8:14 PM

by Charlene Smith (c)

Leaders one (newsfeature)

Seven present and former presidents and premiers Thursday shared a public platform at the 14th International AIDS conference in Barcelona, Spain and called on fellow country leaders to stop talking about acting against.

Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, Njongonkulu Ndungane was the only non-politician on the platform, and delivered a stirring address that had some in tears and brought delegates to their feet in applause.

The archbishop said millions of children were now raising themselves in Africa, "we cannot allow this to happen. We must move more quickly, act more boldly and replace rhetoric with results, starting today."

He told the leaders of the world, "we are all living with AIDS. And no-one should die alone, no-one should struggle alone and no country or continent can solve this alone. We are called by God to enter into relationships with each other on the grounds of our common humanity. Stop stigma by speaking out.

"Each of us must break the silence and speak out often. We can change the way our people respond to the challenge of AIDS by being ever present examples of compassionate justice and action. All governments derive their authority from the people they serve - national priorities are shared responsibilities by governments and people.

"In South Africa we have moved from crisis to crisis with our government. God and history will judge us if we fail to rise to this challenge. There is no more time for pledges or things to come, 10 000 people died of AIDS today, we must act now. By the end of the decade more children will have died than the entire population of Spain."

Former US president, Bill Clinton who heads the International AIDS Trust received prolonged applause when he suggested that rich countries make up the shortfall in payments beyond which poor countries could afford to pay for medication. He suggested, “small countries should be able to say, this is what we can afford to pay and the US account should make up the difference. There are 600 000 people from the Dominican Republic in New York alone. The US is benefiting from the presence of people from the developing world within its borders too.

“We need to keep working for a vaccination and cure. We need an effective AIDS vaccine within the next few years. We need tax breaks for pharmaceutical companies that put money toward vaccine research and a framework for politicians to do something.” Clinton advised delegates to “push every country you can to make deals with drug companies and then come to the rest of us (the large AIDS trusts and organizations) and ask for help. “If you follow this framework it will be easier for the politicians of the countries who have money to help other countries and work to saving lives.”

India’s former premier I K Guipal called for market related pricing to be removed from AIDS drugs and for “social pricing” to replace it. “There should be no restrictions on exporting drugs for treating HIV/AIDS to any country of the world.” (Generic drugs cannot be freely exported in terms of World Trade Organisation regulations.)

While Clinton and leaders from Mozambique, Canada, India, St Kitts (Caribbean), Tanzania and Portugal spoke a barometer above them ticked up minute by minute new infections in the world which at present stand close to 44m people. Prime Minister Denzil Douglas of St Kitts, who represented the 15 member countries of the Caribbean Community noted that his region was the “second hardest hit region in the world in terms of prevalence. And AIDS is up to six times higher in women. It is the major cause of death among Caribbean people aged 15 to 44. The loss of human potential and productivity is harming the Caribbean.”

Former Tanzanian president, Ali Hassan Mwenzi too, noted how fast HIV infections accelerated once the virus took hold in a country, “in 1983 we detected the first HIV+ person in Tanzania, in 1996 there were just over 1 500 infected people, we now have more than 100 000 infected citizens.”

President Paul Kgame of Rwanda said the developing world needed to “strongly and persistenly advocate for immediate access to treatment drugs. Let’s do away with rhetoric, we must show qualities of courage, we must remain accountable, we must keep our promises to deliver, and we as world leaders must work together to defeat AIDS.”

Prime Minister Pascoal Mocumbi of Mozambique pointed out, that African countries were beset by many fatal illnesses, many treatable, “and yet we still are not able to get vaccines and medications to all our people. How then can we develop the capacity to deliver the medicine needed to extend the lives of those infected with AIDS? Research is not enough, we must deliver.”

He said that African leaders must speak “openly and loudly about adult men having sex with young girls, this puts very young girls at great risk.

Former Canadian premier, Kim Campbell said the world had “hope now, but there are legal and social barriers that make it difficult for people to access AIDS. What are the human rights challenges AIDS poses now. What of the human rights of women?” ends

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