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SADC Summit Offers Sound Advice on Combating AIDS
The ongoing summit of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has highlighted the urgency in combating AIDS and called on the international community to pool its resources to win the battle.
The delegates one after another offered their sound advice from different angles on ways to contain the disease on Thursday.
Their heated discussions covered a wide range of subjects ranging from the importance of leadership in anti-AIDS battle, the reduction of AIDS drug prices to AIDS awareness and the relationship between AIDS and poverty.
They all agreed that a strong leadership is paramount to all the others in the fight against the AIDS pandemic.
Executive director of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/ AIDS in Geneva Peter Piot told the summit that a strong leadership would ensure that the disease could be discussed openly.
He stressed: "There is no way that we will win this battle without more openness to get rid of the stigma around the disease.
This has to be an issue for all of us."
He also cautioned that the war against the disease would not be won only by reducing drug prices but also had to be addressed in terms of socio-economic realities.
Organized by the World Economic Forum, the three-day summit, which was opened in the South African coastal city of Durban on Wednesday, is being attended by about 900 delegates from 40 countries.
In his speech, Mozambican President Joachim Chissano said that AIDS awareness was still the biggest priority for the region because many still did not know what it was.
He said the international community had to realize that AIDS was not only a health issue for Africa, but it also affected the entire world.
South African President Thabo Mbeki told reporters he was happy with the way in which the AIDS debate had evolved.
He said the South African government would continue to work with pharmaceutical companies to secure affordable care for sufferers, adding that there was growing consensus about an
integrated approach to communicable diseases including AIDS.
South African Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang revealed at a press conference that SADC health ministers will meet major pharmaceutical companies on Friday to discuss the reduction of AIDS drug prices.
She said she was encouraged that discussions would ensure affordable prices to AIDS sufferers.
It would not only include lower prices for AIDS drugs, but also for communicable diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis (TB), which kill millions of Africans every year, according to the minister.
Msimang said regional cooperation on the AIDS pandemic had been ongoing and a regional strategy was developed to fight the disease.
But the focus was not only on AIDS as there were a number of issues that fueled the epidemic including poverty, she said.
Official statistics show that most of the 30 million AIDS sufferers on the continent are living in sub-Saharan Africa. South Africa has the fastest growing HIV-infection rate in the world
with about 4.7 million infected by the disease.
"All of us know the epidemic is here. There is no lack of political commitment," she said.
Msimang further stressed that HIV/AIDS could not be seen in isolation and it was not the only problem facing the region.
Nothing would be achieved in the fight against AIDS, if the fundamental problem of poverty was not addressed, she added.
Other communicable diseases such as malaria and TB as well as socio-economic issues such as nutrition and poverty were just as important in the fight against AIDS, according to the minister.
Msimang cautioned that the Global AIDS Fund should not be used to force foreign influence on African countries.
She said the region had its own experts who could deal with the scourge.
"We know what is happening here," she said.
Other panelists, however, disagreed with her, saying Africa needed all the help it could get.
Linda Distlerarath, vice president for global health policy for the U. S. pharmaceutical Merck, said the threat that the disease presented to developing countries was unprecedented.
The region needed a political will to generate resources to fight AIDS, she said.
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