Ahern pledges millions to help fight spread of HIV in southern Africa

TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern yesterday launched an Irish aid project to help combat the alarming spread of HIV in southern Africa.

The multimillion euro initiative seeks to provide care for those most affected and use education to help check the spread of HIV.

More than two-thirds of the people who die from AIDS around the world live in southern Africa. Unless it is curbed, it has been warned that the disease will kill somewhere between five and seven million South Africans by 2010.

Mr Ahern said it was a disease which “knew no borders” but that the UN had recognised that with sufficient will and resources, communities and countries could turn the epidemic around.

“In my address to the UN last June, I pledged my support and the support of the people of Ireland to the global fight against HIV/AIDS. Today, I strongly re-affirm that pledge,” he said.

The programme has been developed by Ireland Aid, the State’s overseas support body, following discussions with national governments, regional institutions and aid agencies. Ireland Aid is increasingly seeking to work with existing aid agencies and workers on the ground, an approach it says is more effective in the long run.

Mr Ahern made the announcement at the Soul City project in Johannesburg, which has been using popular mass media like television to educate people on issues such issues as HIV/AIDS. He said the launch of the project was timely given the Earth Summit’s declaration that “human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development and that they are entitled to a healthy and productive life”.

He said the spread of AIDS and HIV was also undermining progress made on sustainable development in the 1990s. He echoed Bill Clinton’s comments that the world cannot win the war on poverty and lose the battle against HIV.

“We know poverty is a key cause of HIV/AIDS and that HIV/AIDS worsens poverty. This disease is not only reversing efforts to reduce poverty, but is hugely undermining international and national efforts for the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals,” he said.

These development goals, agreed at the UN last year, have sought to accelerate a global response to the crisis through increased funding and action on the ground.

Some 28 million Africans are now estimated to have the virus, and in several southern countries at least one in five adults is HIV-positive.