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HIV/AIDS will kill
26% of Namibia's agricultural labour
force in the next 20 years says a report by the
Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and the
Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS)
presented at the UN Economic and Social
Council’s (ECOSOC) 2003 session. Namibia will be
the worst hit among the most affected countries
in Africa. It will be followed by Botswana,
which will see a 23,2 % reduction in its
agricultural labour force, Zimbabwe (22,7 %) and
Mozambique (20 %). The joint report calls on
agricultural institutions to scale up their
efforts to fight the growing HIV/AIDS epidemic.
At present AIDS kills around 3 % of the
workforce in the agricultural sector, but FAO
warns it could hit commercial enterprises hard
enough to undermine the capacity to export and
generate foreign exchange. FAO believes that
many countries are likely to see a quarter of
their farmers
affected by HIV/AIDS. "We will see more and more
what
we have seen recently in southern Africa: a
vicious circle
of poverty, hunger and AIDS, working in a
synergistic way and exacerbating each other,"
the head of UNAIDS
declared and went on to say: "It is absolutely
important
that ministries of agriculture must tackle AIDS
as one of their core priorities."
The Director General of FAO, said that hunger
and poverty, aggravated by HIV/AIDS will create
a vicious spiral. "Where farmers and their
families fall sick, they cultivate less land and
shift to less labour-intensive and less
nutritious crops, agricultural productivity
decreases and hunger and malnutrition are on the
rise. Many children are also losing their
parents before learning how to farm, to prepare
food and to fend for themselves. Severe
malnutrition among orphans is already reported
in the worst-affected areas". According to a
recent IOL article, the World Food Programme (WFP)
Executive Director declared that there are
already
11 million AIDS orphans in Africa who have to
grow crops to feed themselves. They will be
joined by another nine million within seven
years, making a total of 20 million children in
sub-Saharan Africa without parents to feed them
in less
than a decade. This comes on top of the existing
food crisis in the area which has seen the WFP
launching an appeal for $308-million to fund 540
000 tons of aid to prevent starvation in
Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique, Lesotho
and Swaziland. It aims to halve
the 800 million people who go hungry by 2015.
The Executive Director also stated that WFP
needed to spend
€1-billion (about R8-billion) more in 2003 than
during 2002, and that its 2003 budget for Africa
alone was bigger than
its budget for the whole world in 2002.
At International Youth Day celebrations in
Zimbabwe, a United Nations Information Centre
spokesperson said that young people between the
ages of 15 and 24 years were particularly
vulnerable to HIV/AIDS infection. Worldwide,
she declared, "In the year 2000 alone, an
estimated
5,3 million people were newly-infected with
HIV/AIDS and
no fewer than 6 500 young people per day
acquired the virus." She believes young people
must be empowered both to fight the disease and
to play a positive role in society as, globally,
they are at the forefront of social, economic
and political developments. Youth empowerment
includes the participation of young men and
women in society through access to health and
education services, to employment
and income generating opportunities, and to
resources
such as land.
AIDS treatment in southern Africa is about to
grow dramatically with seven countries in the
region accelerating access to antiretroviral
drugs. The Internet news site, AllAfrica.com,
recently reported that the UN special envoy for
HIV/AIDS in Africa said, "Very poor countries
have shown they are capable of doing effective
treatment in the public sector and that they
would be ready to scale up rapidly." Botswana,
with the highest HIV infection rate in the world
at about 38.5%, is leading the way by promising
free antiretroviral treatment to all its 1.5
million citizens. The national programme has
opened six treatment centres since January 2002,
and is treating more than 6 000 people –
out of an estimated 330 000 with HIV/AIDS –
using drugs donated by pharmaceutical giant
Merck as well as funding from the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation.
Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Angola, Zambia and
Zimbabwe are preparing to follow this initiative
by launching or expanding treatment programmes
in their public sectors as soon as possible. The
UNAIDS programme adviser for southern and
eastern Africa stated that partnerships between
governments, non-government organisations and
donors, including pharmaceutical companies, are
managing and funding these programmes. During
his recent visit to Africa, President Bush
pledged that the United States would be a
partner in the battle against this disease that
has already killed more than 17-million in
sub-Saharan Africa. He talked of his proposal to
spend $15-billion over five years to help the
hardest-hit African and Caribbean nations battle
AIDS.
A committee of the United States House of
Representatives, however, has decided to hold
spending on global HIV-AIDS prevention and
treatment measure to $2-billion for the first
year. A bill before the house proposes
$1,43-billion to fight AIDS and other infectious
diseases for the 2004 budget year starting in
October 2003. |
