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Search Terms: intellectual property, AIDS, Africa

Document 122 of 197.

February 4, 2000, Friday

SECTION: OPINION;Pg. B-9:2,7; B-13:1

LENGTH: 634 words

HEADLINE: Go to the roots of poverty and illiteracy to help Africa fight AIDS

BYLINE: Deborah L. Toler; Toler is a policy analyst at the Institute for Public Accuracy in Washington. She is completing a book on the political economy of race and hunger in Africa.

BODY:
In his recent speech to the U.N. Security Council, Vice President Al Gore tried to make the case that the AIDS epidemic in Africa is not just a humanitarian crisis but "a security threat of the greatest magnitude." But Gore did not match his words with deeds.

Gore announced that the United States would more than double its total AIDS budget for Africa, Asia and other regions to $325 million this fiscal year. This was not a sufficient response. The Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) estimates that it would take $1 billion to $3 billion annually to deal effectively with the epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa alone.

If the vice president had been serious about combating AIDS in Africa, he would have announced steps that go to the roots of the poverty and illiteracy that hinder efforts to combat that disease.

Today Africa is the only continent where school enrollment rates are declining and illiteracy is increasing. A UNICEF study of 35 African countries demonstrated that people with a post-primary education tend to be capable of protecting themselves from AIDS, while those with little or no formal schooling are five times more likely to know next to nothing about the disease.

One reason for this fatal illiteracy is that African countries have been forced by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to reduce their expenditures on health and education. Per-capita incomes in Africa have dropped an average of 20 percent since the imposition of IMF and World Bank programs in the early 1980s. It is impossible to fight AIDS under these conditions.

The huge indebtedness of many of these countries tremendously weakens their ability to fight the epidemic. Many African countries are spending upward of 40 percent of their export earnings to service these debts, according to Mark Weisbrot of the Preamble Center for Public Policy in Washington. The AIDS program Gore announced targets Zimbabwe, Uganda and Tanzania and nine other African countries. But Zimbabwe is paying 25 percent of its export earnings to service its debt, even as an estimated 26 percent of its population is infected with HIV/AIDS. Uganda -- with its 1.7 million AIDS orphans, the world's largest proportion -- is spending roughly the same amount to service its debt. Tanzania spends nine times as much on debt payments as on health care, four times more than on education.

While the Clinton administration has canceled some debts that some of these nations owe the United States, it should use its influence on all multilateral and private institutions, such as the IMF and the World Bank, to obtain immediate and unconditional debt cancellation.

The Clinton administration should also support efforts by African countries to make much-needed drugs for AIDS and other illnesses cheaper and more widely available. Clinton administration officials, led by Gore, protested South Africa's effort in this regard because they saw it as a potential violation of intellectual property rights protected by the World Trade Organization and a threat to U.S. pharmaceutical companies. Only after AIDS activists exposed Gore on this issue did he modify his stance.

African countries continue to urge the delay of the intellectual property rights provision for the pharmaceutical industry. Their proposal has the support of most Third World countries, but the Clinton administration is adamantly opposed to it.

Contrary to images of the continent as rife with corrupt dictators and helpless victims, African policy-makers are capable of addressing the complex needs of their people. But to do so, they should be freed from the burdens of crushing debts and unfair trade practices. Under those circumstances, Africans could deal with the AIDS epidemic themselves.

LOAD-DATE: February 18, 2000

Document 122 of 197.


Search Terms: intellectual property, AIDS, Africa
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