Copyright 2000 The Baltimore Sun Company
THE
BALTIMORE SUN
July 24, 2000, Monday ,FINAL
SECTION: EDITORIAL ,10A
LENGTH: 422 words
HEADLINE:
Leadership against AIDS
Fighting its spread: African
countries need public education, medicine to stem mounting toll.
BODY:
THE 13th International AIDS
Conference brought new hope that governments and the private sector together can
slow the disease's lethal march through Africa.
The
United States' decision to offer $1 billion in loans annually
to fight the disease in Africa will help considerably, but
suffering countries need more help from outsiders, and they must help
themselves.
Many sub-Saharan nations have frighteningly high rates of
HIV infection. In 1999, 85 percent of the world's 2.6 million
AIDS-related deaths occurred in Africa, and
5.6 million new cases emerged in sub-Saharan countries.
Once, the
continent needed leaders to fight for liberation. Now, the independent nations
need leaders to fight for their people's survival.
Ugandan and
Senegalese officials are among those leading the way. The presidents of those
countries preach the gospel of AIDS prevention whenever they
make public appearances. As a result, Uganda has drastically reduced its
infection rate, and Senegal has kept rates extraordinarily low -- 2 percent --
compared with the rest of the region. In South Africa, by
comparison, an estimated 20 percent of adults are HIV-positive.
Public
education campaigns in the other countries will help tremendously but aren't
enough. Ways must be found to make still-costly anti-AIDS drugs
available that prolong life and improve its quality, as well as prevent HIV's
spread from mother to infant. More than one-fourth of Zimbabweans are
HIV-positive, but that nation has $40 available to treat each
case, according to the publication Pharmaceutical Technology.
The U.S.
loans -- and aid from other wealthy countries -- can deliver
HIV drugs and pay health professionals to control the disease in
Africa.
Help is also needed from pharmaceutical
companies. If they can resolve intellectual property rights and
patents' issues, lower- cost, generic anti-viral drugs and vaccines would become
more widely available to African AIDS suffers. The
AIDS conference in Durban succeeded despite a bad start at
which South African President Thabo Mbeki refused to renounce long-disproved
theories that HIV does not cause AIDS. Fortunately, Mr. Mbeki's
predecessor, Nelson Mandela, tactfully brushed aside the controversy and called
for action against AIDS, something he should have done while
president.
Africa's plight requires the same energy the
world community eventually generated to fight apartheid. The U.S. loan
announcement is an encouraging sign that the movement is gathering momentum.
LOAD-DATE: July 25, 2000
