Ugandan’s Plea Opens AIDS Conference

The Seventh International Conference on AIDS opened Sunday with an impassioned plea from the president of Uganda, one of the African nations hardest hit by the disease, and sharp criticism of American immigration policies, which can be used to bar AIDS-infected foreigners from entering the country.

“May victory attend your struggles for the survival of humanity,” said the Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni. “We may see untoward billions of people die.”

The six-day meeting is being attended by about 8,000 researchers and more than 400 journalists from around the world. The opening session proceeded with virtually no interruptions. At one point, however, three American AIDS activists silently walked to the podium and briefly hoisted a banner with the words “Killing Time/Killing People.”

In the afternoon, more than 1,000 primarily European AIDS activists paraded through the city, calling for improved AIDS treatments. In a separate demonstration, several hundred anti-vivisectionists protested the use of animals in AIDS research.

The opening ceremony at the world’s most important AIDS meeting featured general statements from leading health officials.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, voiced optimism in predicting that “we will witness the availability of an HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) vaccine in the 1990s.”

The criticism of American immigration policies came in speeches by the Italian minister of health and the commissioner for health and social affairs of the European Community.

The Italian minister, Dr. Francesco De Lorenzo, said the American policy was without scientific basis and was “in contrast with the great democratic traditions” of the United States.

In addition, the organizers of next year’s international AIDS meeting, which is scheduled to be held in Boston, asked all delegates to send letters protesting the restrictions to the U.S. government. If the restrictions are not lifted, the Boston meeting, which will be sponsored by Harvard University, may be canceled.

“If this cancellation occurs, the resulting years’ delay in progress against AIDS will be the responsibility of the government of the United States,” the organizers of the Boston meeting said in a letter distributed to all delegates.

The personal appeal from Museveni was considered particularly significant. Uganda and many other African countries denied the existence of the AIDS epidemic throughout much of the 1980s. This helped to fuel the untracked spread of the deadly HIV virus, which causes AIDS, across the continent.

In Uganda alone--a nation of about 17 million--more than 1 million people are estimated to be infected with HIV. This is about the same number of infections as in the entire United States. Throughout Africa, at least 6 million adults and 900,000 children are estimated to be infected.

The number of new HIV infections in the United States has slowed considerably, to between 40,000 and 80,000 a year. But no such slowing is apparent in Uganda and/or other African nations.