HEALTH: A Mideast Summit? Yes, But an AIDS Summit? No

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 19 2000 (IPS) - Mark Malloch Brown, head of UN Development Programme (UNDP), thinks the AIDS crisis is more devastating and more deadly than any comparable crisis in the world today.

“You can get a summit at short notice on a political crisis,” he complains, “but you cannot get a summit on HIV/AIDS.”

At the end of 1999, about 34.3 million adults and children were living with Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that carries the deadly disease. AIDS has not only claimed the lives of about 18.8 million people so far, but has also left a total of about 13.2 million children orphaned. In Zimbabwe alone, more than 2,000 people die of AIDS each week.

Malloch Brown describes the AIDS pandemic as “an extraordinary crisis that can bring developing nations to their knees”.

Although the disease is prevalent mostly in Africa, he points out that it is now spreading rapidly in the Asian sub-continent. As a result, UNDP is now taking a leadership role on HIV/AIDS because the spread of the disease is significantly impeding efforts to reduce poverty in sub-Saharan Africa.

At the same time, AIDS is also threatening to become a major impediment to poverty reduction in South Asia, Eastern Europe, the Caribbean and elsewhere thereby endangering one of UNDP’s primary goals: the eradication of poverty.

Malloch Brown says that one of the biggest drawbacks is the unwillingness of people to come to terms with the disease – either because of social embarrassment or because of the sheer difficulty of confronting and dealing with it. The devastation caused by the disease, he notes, is best evident only when one sees it through the eyes of the person afflicted with AIDS.

On Oct. 23, the UNDP will honour four individuals, two of whom are HIV positive, for leading the fight against the disease in their own communities. All four – a journalist from French Polynesia, a mother from Malawi, a psychologist from Nicaragua and a priest from Poland – will receive UNDP’s Fourth Annual Race Against Poverty Award during a special ceremony at the United Nations. The event will also mark the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty under the theme ‘Breaking the Silence on HIV/AIDS’.

The four award winners – Maire Bopp Dupont, Catherine Phiri, Rita Arauz Molina and Father Arkadiusz Nowak – will be introduced at a ceremony in the General Assembly Hall by Malloch Brown and receive their awards from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

“These are incredible individuals who made immense sacrifices in leading the fight against HIV/AIDS,” says Djibril Diallo, Director of UNDP’s Communications Office.

The awards ceremony is an annual event organised by UNDP to mobilise worldwide support for the goal of poverty eradication.

Working alongside UNAIDS, the lead UN agency fighting AIDS, UNDP is part of a family of seven UN agencies which have pooled their resources to battle the disease.

UNDP says that recent experience in Africa and Southeast Asia shows that the most effective responses to the HIV/AIDS crisis are those in which national governments commit their own political prestige and financial resources, involve civil society fully, and pursue a comprehensive agenda that includes prevention, care and support.

International assistance is most effective when it is closely co- ordinated with such local efforts.

In Rwanda, a UNDP-supported 1 million dollar campaign is helping the government to strengthen or create community organisations, establish or nurture testing and counselling centres, and deal with HIV in the armed forces.

In Malawi, UNDP has worked with the government to organise a donor roundtable which raised 110 million dollars of the 121 million dollars needed to implement an anti-AIDS plan.

Malloch Brown admits that a shortage of funds has compounded the AIDS crisis. Financial support for UNDP’s HIV-related activities, including cost sharing with the World Bank and other donors, has been about 300 million dollars to date. But UNAIDS has estimated that Africa alone needs about 3.0 billion dollars to fight the disease. “There is a huge gap in financing,” Malloch Brown says.

The lack of resources has been further aggravated by the fact that AIDS is spreading three times faster than the funding to control it.

UNDP, along with UNAIDS and its partners, has therefore launched a global advocacy campaign to increase donor awareness and raise additional funds, not just from governments, but also from foundations and the business community.