PRESS BRIEFING BY SPECIAL ENVOY FOR HIV/AIDS IN AFRICA

If there was ever a time to turn the HIV/AIDS pandemic around in Kenya, that time was now, Stephen Lewis, Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for HIV/AIDS in Africa, told correspondents at a Headquarters press briefing this afternoon.

Mr. Lewis just returned from a trip to Kenya, during which he met at length with the new President, and ministers of health, education and information.  He also met with the leadership of the National AIDS Control Council, the United Nations country team, representatives of civil society and people living with HIV/AIDS.  In addition, he visited Kabera –- a huge slum in Nairobi -– to meet with over 100 commercial sex workers, all of whom were in involved in an HIV prevention programme.

All too often, he noted, when he reported back after a visit to Africa, he was consumed by “gloom and apocalyptic utterance.  But not this time.  This time I came away with a greater degree of hope and optimism than I’ve felt for months”.  It was hard to describe the sense of change from the previous administration, he said.  “Where HIV/AIDS is concerned, the change is night and day.”

Where before, he said, senior officials’ attention to AIDS was perfunctory, this time every conversation demonstrated a new leadership that was intense, committed to confronting the pandemic, determined to put policies and programmes in place, and consumed by the recognition that every single family in Kenya was affected in some way by the ravages of HIV/AIDS.  The President had appointed, and chaired personally, an HIV/AIDS Cabinet Committee.  He was providing very open and public leadership on the issue of AIDS, and demanded the same of his cabinet colleagues.

His meeting with President Kibaki, which Mr. Lewis referred to as “one of the most refreshing” he’s had with a head of State, covered prevention, anti-retroviral drugs, finances, orphans, stigma, the role of religious communities and parliamentarians, the effects on women and girls, the lifting of school fees and the question of prevalence rates. 

Commenting on his meeting with the Minister of Education, Mr. Lewis noted that education was where the full force of the new Government had been felt.  The key promise of the election campaign was the abolition of fees for primary school.  No sooner was the present Government elected, than the promise was fulfilled.  Then, an extraordinary thing happened.  When school reconvened in January,

1.2 million new children poured into the educational system within one week –- an increase of over 20 per cent.  The numbers were still rising, and expected to reach 1.5 million by June. 

How was it possible, he asked, that a campaign to eliminate school fees had not been launched across Africa?  If the experience of Kenya proved anything, it was that those who had argued for the abolition of fees, as a way of liberating the lives of millions of children, were right.  What was so distinctive about Kenya was the new Government’s determination to see the lifting of fees as applicable to everything, including books, uniforms or any extraneous expenses. 

The new Government and the voters understood that abolishing fees would be costly in financial terms, he said, but the free education campaign slogan said it all –- “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance”.  The Ministry was scrambling to put together the dollars to finance the policy.  A government task force had announced in March that it would cost $97.1 million through June, and another $137.1 million through the 2003-2004 school year.  A major portion of the funding came from the Kenyan national treasury, part of it from the World Bank and part of it from bilateral donors.  For the orphaned children of Kenya, the policy was a salvation.  Why, then, was it not in place across the continent?

Mr. Lewis’ conversation with the Minister of Health, he said, was illustrative of a Government determined to break the grip of the pandemic on Kenyan society.  The Government had just received money from the United Nations Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.  The $56 million allocated to the next two years would help to provide anti-retroviral treatment for another 3,000 Kenyans.  There were roughly 7,000 in treatment now, mostly in the private sector.  Already, the new Government had set a target of 40,000 in treatment by 2005. 

He went on to say that the Minister of Information was about to take a very unusual step.  Using the authority granted to him under the broadcasting legislation, he would direct that a certain limited percentage of air time, on all radio and television stations, be devoted to programming on AIDS prevention.  It was a move, he said, that would undoubtedly attract criticism, but just as in the case of his colleagues, the Minister was unshakeable.

Responding to a question, Mr. Lewis stressed that the determination of the new Government to confront the pandemic was palpable everywhere.  He absolutely believed that there should be a campaign to abolish school fees in Africa, and did not understand why there had not yet been such a campaign.

The Global Fund was flexible enough, he said, that were proposals to come from countries to say that the abolition of school fees was one of the ways of getting children orphaned by AIDS into schools; in a school feeding programme, where they might get food once a day; in a school garden programme, where they might learn something about agriculture –- knowledge that they’ve lost with the death of their parents -- all of that was legitimately funded by the Global Fund.  The Fund was quite was flexible in its policies and in its acceptance of proposals. 

What was worrying, he continued, was that the third round for proposals, to be held this fall, was in jeopardy due to lack of resources.  Unless the Group of 8, in France in June or at a special gathering of the donors in July, decided to bring more money to the Fund, “we are in trouble”.  Then, the excellent proposals from countries like Kenya would be stymied.

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