An AIDS explosion in Africa now rivals malaria as a killer in the world's poorest continent, the head of the UN AIDS programme said yesterday. Mr Peter Piot was addressing Africa's top AIDS conference which opened in Ivory Coast's commercial capital, Abidjan, in the presence of the French President, Mr Jacques Chirac, African leaders and leading experts.
He called for the business community to make the fight against AIDS "their struggle" and to help promote a network of prevention and care.
"Let me tell you that the epidemic is much worse than we thought," Mr Piot said at the opening ceremony. "AIDS has already become as big a killer in Africa as malaria. Economic losses due to AIDS may soon outweigh foreign aid in some African countries."
The World Health Organisation Director General, Mr Hiroshi Nakajima, said that "HIV infection in Africa strikes at the active population and affects a large and growing proportion of young people". Mr Piot said that in Africa overall, "7.4 per cent of all women and men aged 15 to 49 are seropositive (infected by HIV) - an unprecedented rate that comes as a surprise even to epidemiologists". Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for two-thirds of the world's 30.6 million people infected by the virus.
Experts paint a bleak picture. Of 10 pregnant women with HIV around the world, eight are in Africa. Of 10 children infected each year, nine are in Africa. Africa has 7.4 million of the world's nine million AIDS orphans.
Speakers said one problem was that most victims did not even know they had been infected.
"UNAIDS estimates that the vast majority of seropositive Africans have no idea they are infected. Ignorance, invisibility and silence reign," Mr Piot said. "It is rare to see the word AIDS even in Africa's newspaper obituaries."