24 April 2001

Text: U.N. Secretary General on OAU AIDS Summit

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said April 24 that the taboos surrounding HIV/AIDS are breaking down, and people are more willing to discuss prevention and treatment plans to slow the epidemic.

Annan's remarks were made in Ghana as he prepared to go to Abuja, Nigeria, for the Organization of African Unity Summit on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Other Related Infectious Diseases April 26-28. Annan will be delivering a "major action-oriented address" to the summit April 26, according to a U.N. press release.

U.N. Deputy Secretary General Louise Fr��hette said in New York that the speech will attempt to bring "some clarity" on the recent proliferation of initiatives and proposals for fighting the disease.

Further information on the summit is available at http://www.oau-oua.org/afrsummit/index.htm

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UN NEWSSERVICE

Abuja Summit Will Help End 'conspiracy of Silence' on HIV/AIDS, Annan Says

24 April - As ministerial meetings got under way today in Abuja, Nigeria, in advance of the African summit on HIV/AIDS, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said this week's forum would help cast light on the once-taboo subject of the deadly disease. "The people are speaking out now, the conspiracy of silence is broken, and we need to have a comprehensive approach to the disease which combines the prevention and treatment," Mr. Annan told reporters late on Monday in Accra, Ghana, where he stopped over for a brief visit to his home country before heading to the African Summit on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Other Related Infectious Diseases.

The Secretary-General, who is to deliver a major action-oriented address to Summit on Thursday, stressed that the event offered African leaders an opportunity to "come together to join the fight against HIV/AIDS."

Mr. Annan said that in response to the epidemic, there had been a recent surge of attention -- a "new energy and new engagement on HIV/AIDS on the part of leaders on this continent and around the world." He stressed that the United Nations was working with other partners from around the world -- including the pharmaceutical companies, the donor community and global civil society -- to tackle this epidemic.

Some of the challenges facing the international community in this effort were highlighted today by UN Deputy Secretary-General Louise Fr��hette, who told a news conference in New York that a recent proliferation of initiatives and recommendations coming from various quarters underscored the "need for some clarity to be brought on what are the key things that we should be focusing on." This had prompted the Secretary-General to take an increasingly clear leadership role on the issue, Ms. Fr��hette said. She added that Mr. Annan's speech at the Summit would aim at "raising the political profile of this issue, injecting some clarity on the strategy of what it is that we need to do, and sort of shift this whole international campaign, which is really starting to take shape, into high gear."

Mr. Annan will follow his Abuja speech with a second address on the AIDS epidemic to be delivered on 30 April to the Council of Foundations in Philadelphia, United States. Those statements would aim to build momentum towards this June's General Assembly special session on HIV/AIDS, which would "itself probably lead to a much more detailed plan of action" to fight the epidemic, Ms. Fr��hette said.

Meanwhile in Abuja, the head of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) called the Summit "an important opportunity to scale up commitment to African-owned responses." In a statement delivered on his behalf by a deputy, ECA Executive Secretary K.Y. Amoako stressed that to "banish HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other infectious diseases -- the so-called diseases of poverty-- from our continent, we have no choice but to develop a new way of doing business."

The Abuja Summit is expected to endorse the outcome of last year's ECA-organized African Development Forum 2000, which called, in part, for a continental strategy for the comprehensive care and treatment of people living with HIV/AIDS, including a Pan-African approach to the affordability of drugs."

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