New York | Sunday
IN the wake of the announcement by South African Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang that the ministry remained unwilling to supply an anti-Aids drug to pregnant HIV-positive women countrywide, Irish rock group U2’s lead singer Bono has called for a ”Marshall Plan” for Africa to save the continent from an Aids holocaust.
Bono, who was brushing shoulders with the rich and powerful at a World Economic Forum in New York, said he would travel to Africa in about six weeks with US Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill to convince him of the need.
”He is going to come back with more than a souvenir spear, I can assure you,” Bono said.
HIV/Aids had set back development to the point where 25-million Africans were HIV positive and they would leave behind 40-million Aids orphans by the end of the decade, he said.
The Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa says that administering the anti-retroviral drug Nevirapine to pregnant women would help to save the lives of some 70 000 babies a year who would otherwise be born with the virus that causes Aids.
Meanwhile, South African doctors donned black armbands with a red ribbon on Saturday at a meeting of the Junior Doctors Association (Judasa) to highlight the fight against the pandemic, their chairman said.
”We as doctors must keep information to show the government what we are facing on the ground. It will help in the fight against Aids,” chairman Dr Karl le Roux said.
”Many doctors are afraid that this would look like a resistance to government but it’s in support of those who are HIV positive.”
Some 4,7-million South Africans are infected with HIV and it is estimated that around 200 000 people will die from Aids this year.
Bono, who has become a voice in the debate over development of the poorest nations, said he was part of a group that had developed a development program for Africa.
”We have an agenda called Data agenda Debt, Aids and Trade for Africa in return for Democracy, Accountability and Transparency in Africa,” Bono told a joint news conference with billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
He aimed to push through the plan by the time of the June 26-27 Group of Eight summit of leaders from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States, in Alberta, Canada.
”It is a deal and it is a tough deal but we think if we follow that through by this summer’s G8 we can get governments to agree on a kind of Marshall plan for Africa,” Bono said.
”There are many, many different strands out there taking on this problem we want them to be woven together in a sort of comprehensive and unified plan,” he added.
Bono said the Marshall Plan involved US financial support for post World War II reconstruction in Europe as a bulwark against Soviet communism, likening it to Africa’s vulnerability to ”other ideologies”, particularly after the September 11 terrorist attacks.
”I think it would be very smart for the West (to be) preventing the fires rather then putting them out,” Bono said.
Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, host of the G8 summit, had confirmed that Africa would be centre stage for the leaders, he added. Microsoft’s Gates, whose Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has helped fund the fight against HIV/Aids in Africa, said awareness of the problems of the poor countries should be raised.
”Because people the rich world and the poor world are so separated, the awareness of the crisis in Aids and the very effective interventions that can take place is very, very low,” Gates said. – AFP, Sapa