07 Jun 2006: ISS Today: UN Calls for Action to Halt AIDS

7 June 2006: UN Calls for Action to Halt Aids
BBC

Aids is spreading faster than ever, outstripping efforts to contain it, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has said. "Last year saw more new infections and Aids-related deaths than ever before," Mr Annan told a conference in New York.  Only 12% of people with Aids in underdeveloped countries are getting anti-retroviral drugs, he added. In 2001, the UN set a target date of 2015 to halt the spread of the disease but Mr Annan said better leadership and funding was needed to reach that goal.

Commentary

Initial reports detailing a disease affecting the human immune system, now generally referred to as HIV/AIDS, surfaced in the US in 1982 when a group of doctors in California filed a report about a mysterious problem affecting gay men.  HIV/AIDS has now become the biggest threat to human security in Sub Saharan Africa. The 2006 Report on Global Aids, estimates that 21.6 million people are infected, out of a global figure of 34 million. South Africa bears the highest burden of this virus with 5.5 million people infected.

HIV/AIDS has an enormous impact on all sectors of society. In South Africa, 12.7% of teachers are infected, 12% of nurses, and AIDS orphans are in the region of 240 000. This has serious impacts on the already challenged human resource capacity to deliver the most basic socio-economic rights. If we do not stem the tide of this pandemic we risk forfeiting many of the advances already made in this domain.

The slow response to the roll out of ARV’s and the lack of adequate funding to prevent and treat the infection has to be addressed. Countries, including South Africa, have committed themselves to the Millennium Development Goals, where one of the goals is to reverse the infection rates. Civil society and the international agencies have to closely monitor the progress in this regard. They have to also ensure that donors keep up their commitments to fund the enormous costs of preventing and treating this disease. There is too much at stake!

Pemy Gasela, Granny Lekganyane and Cheryl Hendricks