AFRICAN insurance firms and UNAids are to form special committees to plan country-specific strategies to combat the HIV/Aids pandemic, the African Insurers’ Organisation said on Thursday. Jean Kacou Diagou, the organisation’s vice president, said its just-concluded 28th general meeting had ended with a decision to set up these committees in 41 member countries. Diagou said the committees would work with UNAIDS to determine “the contributions the insurance sector would have to bear.” The Abidjan meeting was attended by noted Aids experts, including Frenchman Luc Montagnier, who is credited with identifying the HIV virus along with an American researcher, and hundreds of delegates from some 70 countries in Africa and elsewhere. Some 36-million people worldwide are estimated to be infected with HIV, the virus that causes Aids, 95% of them in developing countries. Sub-Saharan Africa is the region worst affected by the pandemic, with 24-million people infected. – AFP