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| health > AIDS > story page |         |
U.S. steps up global fight against AIDSJanuary 10, 2000 U.N. sees threat to peace in Africa
From staff and wire reports UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- The Clinton administration will ask Congress to approve an extra $150 million to combat the global spread of AIDS and other diseases, especially in Africa, Vice President Al Gore said Monday.
He also called on the United Nations Security Council to adopt a new, wider definition of world security to include global environmental and health hazards. Gore spoke at the start of the first U.N. Security Council session devoted to a public health problem in the council's 55-year history. Where the money would go"Last year," Gore said, "I announced the largest ever increase in the U.S. commitment to international AIDS programs -- $100 million to fight AIDS in Africa, India, eastern Europe and other areas. Today, I announce America's decision to step up the battle." "The budget the Clinton-Gore administration will send to our Congress next month will include an additional increase of another $100 million," he said. Gore said some of the money in the U.S. proposal would go for programs to: • Reduce the stigma associated with AIDS • Strengthen "health infrastructures" to treat and prevent the spread of AIDS • Reduce mother-to-child transmission • Support home- and community-based care to people with AIDS • Provide care for children orphaned by AIDS U.S. military to be used in anti-AIDS effortsGore also said: • The administration is seeking another $50 million for "research, purchase and distribution of life-saving vaccines in developing nations." • A new partnership with the business community active in Africa will help launch education campaigns in the workplace to promote AIDS prevention. • The administration's budget request for next year would "contain specific funding for the U.S. military to work with the armed forces of other nations to combat AIDS." AIDS seen as security threatGore urged other nations to consider the AIDS epidemic a true threat to peace in Africa and make it a priority on the world's security agenda. "The heart of the security agenda is protecting lives, and we now know that the number of people who will die of AIDS in the first decade of the 21st century will rival the number that died in all the wars in all the decades of the 20th century," Gore said.
"We tend to think of a threat to security in terms of war and peace," Gore told the council in the first speech ever by a U.S. vice president to the 15-member body. "Yet no one can doubt that the havoc wreaked and the toll exacted by HIV/AIDS do threaten our security." "This meeting demands of us that we see security through a new and wider prism, and forever after, think about it according to a new, more expansive definition," he added. Sub-Saharan Africa devastatedU.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke said Sunday the goal of the Security Council meeting is to highlight the toll AIDS has taken on Africa, attempt to reduce the disease's stigma and to "begin to redefine security as broader in the post-Cold War era than it used to be." AIDS has devastated the economic and social fabric of Africa, taxing already poverty-stricken health systems, robbing countries of their most productive members and leaving about 11 million AIDS orphans on the continent. Eastern and southern Africa have been particularly hard hit. Home to just 4.8 percent of the world's population, sub-Saharan Africa, as the region also is called, has more than 50 percent of the world's HIV-positive people. It also accounts for 60 percent of the 16.3 million lives lost to AIDS since the epidemic began, U.N. figures show.
Political instability in Africa fearedIn his own remarks to the council, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that high AIDS death rates among Africa's elite, including public servants, threaten the ability of some countries to govern effectively. High infection rates among police and armed forces also have left African countries ill-equipped to face security threats, Annan said. "In already unstable societies, this cocktail of disasters is a sure recipe for more conflict," Annan said. "And conflict in turn provides fertile ground for further infections." "The breakdown of health and education services, the obstruction of humanitarian assistance, the displacement of whole populations and a high infection rate among soldiers -- as in other groups which move back and forth across the continent: all these ensure that the epidemic spreads ever further and faster." Opposition to U.N. planLast month, Annan invited dozens of representatives from Africa, U.N. agencies, donor governments, voluntary organizations and businesses to draw up a plan to reduce infection rates in Africans aged 15-24 by 25 percent before 2005. He called for more information and prevention campaigns, the speedy development of a vaccine, affordable treatment for Africans and a commitment by wealthier countries to put up more money to fight the epidemic in Africa. Annan invited the council to become a partner in that effort by working to ensure that armed conflict doesn't spread AIDS or prevent U.N. agencies and other groups from trying to control it. Not all council members approved of the meeting. Western diplomats said Russia told Holbrooke it wouldn't make a speech, arguing that other U.N. bodies such as the World Health Organization and the U.N. Economic and Social Council were more appropriate venues to debate the problem of AIDS in Africa. China also voiced reservations about Holbrooke's agenda, diplomats said. Both countries generally try to focus the Security Council's attention on strict matters of international peace and security to prevent issues such as human rights from arising.
Political purpose in Gore's appearanceThe speech by Gore is one of several appearances the White House has reserved for the vice president in hopes of boosting his presidential campaign. It could help Gore counter criticism from liberal and other activist groups who say the Clinton administration has not dedicated enough attention to Africa generally and AIDS in particular. "The (AIDS) activists are right that this was ignored for far too long," Gore said Monday in an interview with CNN. Gore addressed as "Mr. President .... "The United States holds the presidency of the Security Council this month. Holbrooke scheduled Monday's open session and invited Gore to speak. After Gore's remarks, Annan addressed him with a smile as "Mr. President" -- and then, after being greeted by laughter and applause, added "...of the Security Council." That brought more laughter. Gore, with his U.S. presidential hopes clearly in mind, then interjected: "I am working on it." White House Correspondent John King, Senior U.N. Correspondent Richard Roth and Medical Correspondent Steve Salvatore contributed to this report. RELATEDS AT  :
WebMD - HIV/AIDS RELATED STORIES: U.N. launches Africa AIDS initiative RELATED SITES: United Nations
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CNN's Charlayne Hunter-Gault shows the situation in Africa.
332K/31 sec. 