PRESS CONFERENCE BY CHAIRMAN OF AIDS ROUND TABLE 4

PRESS CONFERENCE BY CHAIRMAN OF AIDS ROUND TABLE 4

A “vast and rapid increased funding” would be needed to support national efforts of developing countries in the fight against HIV/AIDS, President Benjamin Mkapa of the United Republic of Tanzania said at a Headquarters press conference this afternoon.

Reporting on the outcome of the meeting of the special session’s Round Table 4 which he chaired, President Mkapa said it was realized that the challenge was great and costly, and that national budgets by themselves would not do. It was stressed, however, that the allocation by States of increased funds for the war against AIDS internationally would indicate the level of their political commitment.  (Round Table 4 considered funding and international cooperation in the war against AIDS.)

The General Assembly’s special session on HIV/AIDS, which began on Monday, 25 June, is scheduled to conclude later today with the adoption of a Declaration of Commitment to the fight against the disease which has killed an estimated 22 million worldwide.

At the outset of the briefing, President Mkapa expressed satisfaction at the “happy event” that the Security Council had this morning nominated Secretary-General Kofi Annan for a second term.

President Mkapa thanked members of the Council for the confidence they had renewed “in this great son of Africa” and wished the Secretary-General “even greater achievements in the years ahead”.  He thanked the Secretary-General for initiating the special session and the global fund against AIDS.  “I think it is really an indication of how very formative he has been in strengthening the United Nations these past five years”, he observed.

On the meeting of Round Table 4, he said the participants spent some time looking at political commitments as a factor or weapon in the war against AIDS.  The Round Table, which was not open to the public, was frank, free and open as possible.

The political commitment issue was taken up in order to emphasize the need for national strategies designed with the widest possible participation of stakeholders by age, gender and then by organizations, President Mkapa said.  It was against such national strategies that international support was envisaged to be truly productive and influential.  The need for national strategies in the war against AIDS was well articulated. 

It was realized in the discussions that there was a need for greater generosity to ensure that the “war chest” came nearest to meeting the cost of organizing the AIDS international campaign.  The President said total spending of developing countries on HIV/AIDS this year would be about $1.5 billion but UNAIDS and other experts had estimated that a basic programme of prevention, care, support and treatment would cost $9.2 billion per year by the year 2006.

He said that estimate did not include the cost of improving the health infrastructure in developing countries that was a vital ingredient for success. 

The Round Table agreed that a vast and rapid increased funding needed to happen, he said.

Secondly, he said it was recognized that those resources needed to come from a variety of sources.  It was considered a global struggle.  Participants stressed that all potential allies in the fight should be released, although the struggle must begin at home.  The developing countries needed to make sure that they were contributing as much as they could from their own sources.  At the same time, traditional development partners should be forthcoming, not only with official development assistance but also in the form of debt relief.  It would strengthen the hand of severely affected countries.

The participants also recognized, the President pointed out, that there was a need for expanding the alliances that encompassed new partners, particularly the companies, foundations and the philanthropies. There was need to harness those and to encourage more like them to take part. It was noted, for instance, that the alliance, such as the International Partnership against AIDS in Africa, had been extremely useful in this regard.

Thirdly, it was recognized that developing countries needed to lead their own efforts against HIV/AIDS, and partners needed to respect their lead.  “I have to stress the second part, that the partners need to respect their lead, and that the wars must really be country-led and internationally supported whether bilaterally or internationally, or institutionally based”, he asserted.

Over the past year, he said, more and more leaders had acted publicly on HIV/AIDS and many more summits on AIDS had been held in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.  The strong turnout of leaders of developing countries at the special session was the latest sign of that growing commitment, he noted.

As countries increasingly took charge of their efforts against HIV/AIDS, he said, partners of all types needed to respect country leadership.  That meant ensuring that all external support fitted within national HIV/AIDS strategies and furthered their implementation.

Fourthly, President Mkapa said those resources needed to be additional to current development spending.  “It should be new money, not a carving of official development assistance which had already been voted by the donor community”.  To be effective, the resources for HIV/AIDS needed to be additional and not diverted from other development priorities, he added.  The links between poverty and HIV/AIDS were well established, “so it will not pay to reduce other development investments”.  If development spending was short-changed, he said, HIV would continue to fly on lack of opportunity.  If HIV investment were short-changed, nothing else done in development would matter.  Although the money required was significant, so were the amounts required for previous major multilateral efforts.  Those contributions could rise, as would the call for additional resources.

Fifthly, he said, the proposed global fund should be agreed and put in place as soon as possible.  “In fact, the preponderant expectation was that it ought to be up and running by the end of this year.”  He said the fund would be an essential complement to existing mechanisms.  It could increase overall resources for HIV/AIDS by attracting more contributions from public and private donors alike.  It could also accelerate the flow of funds.

He said some believed that the establishment of the fund itself would accelerate the flow of funds by consolidating more external support and reducing the number of separate analyses.  It could also achieve important economies of scale by purchasing and cross-country actions.  It could reduce the time donors spent by searching for worthy activities, and affected countries spent looking for interested donors.

Sixth, and finally, he said civil society needed to be centrally involved in global cooperation and funding.  Civil society had played a pivotal role in all countries struggling with HIV/AIDS.  They had pioneered many of the most effective measures against the epidemic.  At the global level, representatives of civil society needed to be involved in design, decision-making and implementation of cooperative undertakings.  At the country-level, civil society and communities needed to have ready and reliable access to resources so that they could carry on their vital part in the struggle against the pandemic.

Asked whether he saw signs of political will among the developed countries emerging and what his country was gaining from the conference, President Mkapa said political will was growing.  Already some countries had pledged funds to the initial amount earmarked for the global fund.  He hoped the momentum would pick up as a result of the interaction among delegations.

As to the gains for his country, he said his participation in the session and the state of the war against HIV/AIDS in similarly placed countries like his own in sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean would help broaden the awareness of the seriousness of the problem among Tanzanians.  “Silence and ignorance had sometimes contributed to the spread of this terrible disease”, he said.  He had made contacts at the session at all levels, including with pharmaceutical companies for help for his country as it strengthened its infrastructures to combat the AIDS pandemic.

Asked what the situation was in Tanzania, he said it was serious.  It had been figured that the rate of infection was one in ten.  It was serious because the rate of infection was particularly high among the age group of 14 and 25, “which did not augur well for training of professionals and skilled people” very necessary for economic growth and therefore prosperity.

In addition to that, he said, there was the problem of transmission of the disease from mother to child, a rate of about 73,000 children a year.  The country had already been given access to drugs that would reduce the problem considerably, he stated.  The government was in touch with pharmaceutical companies as well as with countries of the Southern African Development Community to see whether they could obtain a more generous deal from those companies to treat the 2 million affected.

On the action his government was taking to combat the disease, he said it had embarked upon “a dynamic programme of education”, including in primary schools and cities.  Non-governmental organizations, community-based as well as faith-based bodies, had also been involved in the challenge of ministering to orphans and victims who had no relatives to take care of them.  “So, really, on all fronts we’re trying to engage the whole society in this war.”

He told a questioner that, as he had observed earlier, the Government was trying to mobilize civil society to take on the responsibility for the upbringing and welfare of orphans.  It was improving education in numbers and quality, as well as in skills training.

President Mkapa told another correspondent that his Government had not considered legislation involving the suspension of patent rights of pharmaceutical companies.  It was one of the issues that might be considered collectively at the

Organization of African Unity (OAU) Summit next month, he said.  He thought OAU member States should harmonize their policies and cooperate more fully not only in exchanging experiences regarding prevention, treatment and research, but also on how they dealt with the issue of accessing anti-retroviral drugs. 

He said discussions on the subject had taken place among South African Development Community Ministers of Health last month.  Tanzania's Minister of Health, Anna Abdallah, who was present at the press briefing, said agreement was reached at that meeting on the steps to be taken.  It was agreed that the drugs would be very expensive.  Talks were still going on with the pharmaceutical companies on further reduction of the costs of the drugs.  Seven drugs had been identified, and the Minister said the cheapest among them would cost $1 per person.  But with 2 million persons affected, it would mean $2 million daily which the country could not afford, the President said.

President Mkapa told correspondents that he had articulated passionately at the Round Table “the needs, the possibilities, the imperatives and the capacities” of their countries.  He had expressed the hope that participants would now “go and put our money where our mouths have been”.

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