United Nations Hosting First Global Conference on AIDS

Posted August 8, 2006 in News

"Everybody has come to this late," said Stephen Lewis of Canada, the UN's AIDS envoy for Africa. "The world has been seized and galvanized only over the last 18 months or so. And in the meantime 17 million people have died in sub-Sahara Africa."

There is also no dispute that billions of dollars are needed for poor countries to halt the devastation, which in Africa is wiping out large sectors of a productive work force.  But few agree on where and how to spend limited resources as they become available: on basic health services, on AIDS prevention campaigns or on antiretroviral treatment too.

Former South African president Nelson Mandela warned that the AIDS crisis threatens to wipe out all social progress made in Africa in the past decades. He said that a "social revolution" similar to that against apartheid was required to deal with the problem.

In a recent speech in Nairobi, Canadian United Nations special envoy Stephen Lewis pointed out that only 1 percent of the millions of Africans suffering from AIDS have access to even minimal medication. Lewis harshly critized rich western countries, calling the failure to provide minimal levels of aid "the grotesque obscenity of the modern world."

In Pretoria, South African Human Sciences Research Council labour expert Jocelyn Vass said that the global AIDS crisis is at its worst in the same places that have been negatively effected by globalization. She said that HIV prevalence “reflects inequalities in social structure”, which is why it is highest in sub-Saharan Africa, India and China.” Vass also said that there was an “interdependency” between the response of the corporate sector to globalization and its response to AIDS. In both cases, she said, corporations responded by trying to limit the effect on profits by changing employment contracts, relocating to other countries, and slashing benefits.

Sources: Dominion Paper, Canada  and Canadian National Union Public Employees

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