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Note: This document is from the archive of the Africa Policy E-Journal, published
by the Africa Policy Information Center (APIC) from 1995 to 2001 and by Africa Action
from 2001 to 2003. APIC was merged into Africa Action in 2001. Please note that many outdated links in this archived
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Africa: AIDS, Recent Statements
Africa: AIDS, Recent Statements
Date distributed (ymd): 000901
Document reposted by APIC
+++++++++++++++++++++Document Profile+++++++++++++++++++++
Region: Continent-Wide
Issue Areas: +economy/development+ +US policy focus+
Summary Contents:
This posting contains (1) a reminder of the on-line discussion on
AIDS being hosted by the Economic Commission for Africa, (2) an oped
piece by APIC/Africa Fund director Salih Booker in the August
28, 2000 edition of the Boston Globe, entitled "Use the Surplus to
fight AIDS", and (3) testimony at a post-Durban congressional
briefing by Chatinkha Nkhoma. Another posting today contains
references to a variety of new reports and links on HIV/AIDS, as
well as the announcement of a new Africa-wide network AFREHET
(African Network for Family, Reproductive and Environmental Health
Research, Education and Training).
+++++++++++++++++end profile++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
REMINDER:
As previously announced, the UN Economic Commission for
Africa (ECA) is hosting its second Africa Development Forum (ADF)
entitled, AIDS: The Greatest Leadership Challenge, now rescheduled
in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from 3-7 December. An online
discussion preceding the ADF was launched on 1 July 2000.
As most of you know the publicity surrounding the World AIDS
conference held in South Africa in July has come and gone. The
question now is whether Africa and the world will continue the
sense of urgency that was communicated at that gathering. Whether
or not you are among those who will gather in Addis Ababa for the
next major African conference dedicated to the issue, you can help
maintain the momentum by contributing your insights to the on-line
discussion. The results of the discussion will be brought to the
attention of conference participants and communicated to African
policymakers and governments.
Although the discussion started in July, one can join at any time.
The remaining sessions before the Forum are being moderated by
APIC's Jean Sindab Fellow Karin Santi. A full archive of previous
contributions is open for review by visitors as well as
participants. If you want to focus greater attention on the need
for more urgent action, don't miss this opportunity to speak out.
To join the list, please send a message to:
[email protected]
You may also sign up on the web, or read messages already
posted, by visiting: http://www.bellanet.org/adf/2000
The full archive is open for you to read, whether or not you sign
up. However, in order to post messages to the discussion, you must
sign up as a participant.
Use the Surplus to Fight AIDS
By Salih Booker
Boston Globe 08/28/2000 Page: A15 Section: Op-Ed
Salih Booker is director of the Africa Policy Information Center in
Washington and the Africa Fund in New York.
The recent US proposal to lend Africa $1 billion a year at
commercial rates for the purchase of antiviral AIDS drugs is a
cruel hoax at best and a vivid example of government-subsidized
corporate greed at worst.
The plan aims to protect American pharmaceutical companies
threatened by African rights under the World Trade Organization's
rules to pursue parallel imports and compulsory licensing of
anti-AIDS drugs. In other words, the US government is prepared to
push Africa further into debt in order to prevent Africans from
getting cheaper drugs from Brazil or India or from licensing local
firms to produce generic versions at home.
African governments already spend more on debt repayment to wealthy
nations than on their own countries' health and education combined.
The International AIDS Conference recently held in Durban, South
Africa, generated tremendous news coverage as a sort of rediscovery
of the AIDS pandemic and convinced the Clinton administration that
they needed to do something beyond yet another meager request for
additional funding for AIDS programs. Setting up a debt financing
program through the Export-Import Bank requires no funding from
Congress and offers dramatic headlines because of the price tag.
But the news out of Durban was not new. This was the 13th annual
event, and no government can claim that it never saw the AIDS
plague coming. Mind-boggling estimates of the spread of HIV were
available more than a decade ago. But because Africa has become the
epicenter of the pandemic, the world is not yet willing to act.
Africa is facing a deadly plague while prosperous Western countries
spend huge amounts of money on finding cures for baldness and
obesity. The continent is home to an estimated 80 percent of the
world's HIV/AIDS population.
This crisis is a stark reminder of the double standard that has
marginalized African lives for the past 500 years and that now
divides the world between rich and poor, white and black. At the
moment, support from international donors to fight AIDS worldwide
is estimated at $300 million a year. An effective budget for
prevention alone in Sub-Saharan Africa would require about $3
billion.
Yet as US politicians line up to debate how much of the surplus to
spend on tax cuts, the option of allocating a significant part of
the surplus to fighting AIDS is not even on the table. Because the
victims are predominantly black, the wealthy, predominantly white
countries fail to respond with more than token resources.
Almost none of the people affected by AIDS in Africa have access to
the life-saving drugs that have brought hope to millions of
patients in the West. This is far more than a health issue: AIDS is
wiping out large portions of the work force and crippling national
economies. More people may die of AIDS in Africa than died in World
War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam combined.
Multiple strategies to fight the epidemic are available and can
make a dramatic difference even in the worst-affected countries.
Prevention strategies, from AIDS education to condom distribution,
do work when they are implemented on a large scale. This has been
amply shown in countries such as Uganda and Senegal. A
comprehensive strategy also requires restoring basic health
services, which have been slashed throughout Africa. And it must
include steps to promote women's rights and change male attitudes,
since a large proportion of AIDS patients in Africa are women
infected by men.
Making affordable drugs and treatment available rather than
restricting them to patients in rich countries is a moral
imperative. It is also essential for prevention. Effective
prevention requires public willingness to be tested, but as a South
Africa AIDS activist recently remarked, why go to the doctor if you
know in advance that the medicine cupboard will be bare?
Cancellation of unpayable debts could enable African countries to
dedicate higher proportions of their budgets to combating AIDS.
Here again pledges from rich countries are not matched by action
when budget decisions are made.
US decision makers have not broken out of the business-as-usual
budget process that regards spending on global health as an
afterthought at best and any spending on Africa as wasteful. The
result is that tens of millions of human beings, overwhelmingly
Africans, are written off as expendable.
In this election year, candidates for president and for Congress
should consider dedicating a modest 5 percent of the annual budget
surplus - approximately $9.5 billion a year - to a global health
emergency fund. This would still fall short of the effort needed,
but it would be a leap above the paltry $325 million in President
Clinton's current request to Congress for HIV/AIDS worldwide. And
it would send a signal that US politicians share a sense of global
responsibility rather than regarding globalization only as an
opportunity for corporate profit.
The United States hesitates at its own peril, for the only thing
more dangerous to humanity than AIDS itself is the double standard.
Post Durban Congressional Briefing
Statement by Chatinkha Nkhoma
[reposted from discussion list [email protected]
(formerly [email protected]).
See http://www.egroups.com/group/breaking-the-silence]
Capitol Hill Rayburn House Office Building - 26th July 2000
Last year, around this same time I was in this same building,
testifying at a hearing on AIDS in Africa. Since that time, many
things have happened. Money has been pledged; Many initiatives have
emerged; Some pharmaceutical companies have made some positive
gestures by offering reduction to the cost of AIDS medications;
Sadly though, during this same period, AIDS has continued to wipe
out my family, my community, nation and continent. In just this
year, the number of members of my family who have died from AIDS
has risen from 15 to 23. That is 8 in only one year. With parents
dying, the number of orphans has also continues to rise. Under
these circumstances, Children are losing their only protection,
Mothers, Orphans become domestic slaves, sex slaves, and street
beggars. The situation is so overwhelming for families, communities
and even the governments; things have gone so out of hand.
Africa is not only losing the generation dying of AIDS, but the
next generation will be of orphans and the continent will no longer
belong to Africans.
So even after I had my application for a scholarship to Durban
rejected. Even though I am in constant excruciating pain from this
bone-debilitating AIDS condition, I struggle to get to Durban,
excited because I imagined that this conference being held in
Africa, where we are dying in alarming statistics would surely
bring salvation. I had to be there. Because for me, AIDS is not
about academic, it is not a career, or a duty, or a science, or
politics, or profits. It is real. It is within me and around me
every second. I want it to go way because it is hurting me.
I had expected and believed that the AIDS conference held in
Durban, Africa was not going to bring more pledges and talk, but
real solutions. It would be the beginning of the end of our
suffering.
Instead presentations after presentations, Africans were blamed for
their suffering, Criticized for dying, African women insulted,
called prostitutes for being poor and selling their bodies to feed
their children and millions of the orphans. So African women had to
close their legs to stop AIDS.
We were told that Africans had bad sexual habits and unless we
change our behaviors, our culture, our customs, until we stopped
being Africans, we would continue to die. We were told that become
sexual angels first to get help, But American and Europeans did not
have to become sexual angels to contain AIDS and stop its killings,
they were given access to treatment.
What happens to the millions of us already infected? Are we being
condemned to death?
We kept hearing once again, that the reasons AIDS was claiming our
lives was because we are poor, yet because of this same poverty, we
are denied access to life. When did it become acceptable to
eliminate the poor? It is not OK to let people die because they are
poor. It is not humane. This conference must have costed double
digits millions, money which could have at least bought painkillers
to allow us die in dignity. So it is not because of money are
dying, it is about International racism.
Treating millions of Africans may seem so overwhelming we want to
throw up our hands and say, "it is impossible" But we must remember
that the number keeps increasing. AIDS will not go away on its own.
It will not go away even if we stop having sex. It will keep
killing and killing and killing.
AIDS is a Global public Health emergency. It started with one
person and crossed all boarders, all the barriers, artificial and
real. Manmade and natural. And unless we, as the human race, remove
the same barriers as well, the racial barriers, economic barriers,
social barriers, academic barriers, we will not conquer it.
We must remember that AIDS has no other physical appearance except
the one you are see here. AIDS looks like me, feels like me, I AM
AIDS. You cannot get AIDS unless human like me give it to you. So
by condemning me, you are not protecting yourselves. By condemning
Africa, the whole world is not SAFE. I shudder every time I see how
science has turned humans against humans instead of working for the
good of humans
As Africans, we don't want your wealth, or your power, or your
might. We just want an opportunity to live longer, healthier,
productive lives. An opportunity to love and raise our children,
and not leave behind as orphans but young adults to continue
looking after Africa.
Africa's debt is a staggering 227 billion; lending us more billions
keeps us in the shackles of poverty and misery. Canceling the debts
can give us an opportunity to break the chain of the dependency
theory. We must do it.
Give us an opportunity to live and allow us to buy or produce
cheaper generic drugs by canceling the debt.
Having AIDS Drugs is not a symbol of prestige and wealth, it is an
opportunity to live.
THE MOST IMPORTANT IS THAT WE MUST STOP TALKING AND STOP THE
SUFFERING, THE PAIN, WE MUST STOP THE GENOCIDE.
Chatinkha C. Nkhoma
676 Houston Avenue #304
Silver Spring, MD 20912
301-589-7717
[email protected]
This material is being reposted for wider distribution by the
Africa Policy Information Center (APIC). APIC provides
accessible information and analysis in order to promote U.S.
and international policies toward Africa that advance economic,
political and social justice and the full spectrum of human rights.
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