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UN envoy sees improvements and deficits in Zambia’s fight against HIV/AIDS

UN envoy sees improvements and deficits in Zambia’s fight against HIV/AIDS

Stephen Lewis briefs journalists
Thanks to the United Nations-sponsored fund to fight AIDS and other diseases, Zambia may reach a target of treating 100,000 of its citizens living with the illness by the end of the year, up from about 18,000 people now, the UN envoy on AIDS said today.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, launched by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, gave the southern African country $253 million, enabling the Government to expand its free AIDS treatment into rural areas. With the political leadership engaged as never before, the commitment has filtered through the society and generated unprecedented optimism, Mr. Annan’s Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS in Africa, Stephen Lewis, told a news conference today at UN Headquarters in New York.

“No matter where we went, the level of awareness of the pandemic was intense. To be sure, it was largely focused on the urgent need for treatment, but it also came through in conversation after conversation at the grassroots, about prevention and care and orphans and the special plight of women,” he said. “Once a country has reached such an all-embracing public dialogue, the winds of change are irreversible.”

The roles of the Global Fund, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) and, partly the World Bank, could not be underestimated, Mr. Lewis said, nor could help from the United Kingdom, which was giving money to improve capacity in the social sectors, and from the United States.

Mr. Lewis had issued heartfelt appeals last June to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) not to drag the gruelling austerity programme it had imposed on Zambia to the first quarter of this year, but to end it last December as originally planned. He said the resulting economic crisis was having a grave impact on the spread of HIV/AIDS in the country.

Today he said, “Zambia has just met the IMF conditions imposed on debt relief, so that the excruciating debt service – tallied at $290.5 million owing to the International Financial Institutions in 2003 – may now (although it’s never certain) be alleviated.”

Meanwhile, on the deficit side, there was a growing contagion of sexual assault and some 23 per cent of children were orphans, he said.

A UN report released last week showed the expenditures on armaments had now reached $1 trillion a year, he said.

“The Global Fund is asking for less than three-tenths of 1 per cent of that and can’t seem to get it,” he said.

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Video of press briefing [22mins]