Africa must brace itself for an Aids time bomb as 8 000 people are infected with HIV a day in the region worst hit by the pandemic, the United Nations warned on Thursday.
Seventy percent of the 45-million people worldwide infected with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa — even though the region is home to only 11% of the world’s population, said a fund set up to combat three of the world’s most devastating diseases.
The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria said that per capita growth in half of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa is falling by 0,5 to 1,2% each year as a direct result of Aids. By 2010, per capita GDP in some of the hardest-hit countries may drop by 8% and per capita consumption may fall even farther, the Geneva-based fund said.
”If we think we are seeing an impact today, we have to brace ourselves because it is set to get very much worse in the future,” warned Alan Whiteside, member of a commission set up by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to deal with HIV/Aids and governance in Africa.
The Commission on HIV/Aids and Governance in Africa is calling for a massive scaling up of treatment to prevent a doomsday-style scenario with the collapse of societies under the weight of the pandemic.
Just 50 000 Africans have access to life-prolonging anti-retroviral drugs while at least four million people are in need, the 20-member commission told several hundred health experts and politicians in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.
The Global Fund say that the disease is already claiming the lives of thousands of teachers and leading to school closures across sub-Saharan Africa. Healthcare systems in many countries are overwhelmed by a growing number of HIV/Aids patients, and studies forecast that healthcare costs in hardest-hit countries may increase tenfold over the next several years as a result of the pandemic.
Former Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda, whose son died of an Aids-related illness in 1986, made an impassioned appeal to the international community to help the world’s poorest continent.
”African governments do not have the capacity to sustain treatment programmes at national level,” Kaunda said.
”They need the support and assistance of the international community in order to
scale up treatment programmes in a sustainable manner.”
Earlier this year, the UN Aids agency revised estimates of the annual cost of combating HIV/Aids from $10-billion to $12-billion. – Sapa-AP